


And No One Has Come to Mourn Me

by Order_Of_The_Forks



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: M/M, Slow Burn, Tree Bros, Tree Bros AU, anyway connor is a ghost sort of but not dead, don't worry connor isn't little all the time, ghosts lmao, i mean the oven isn't even on yet, is ootf writing another ghost au?? hell yeah she is, look when i say slow burn i mean slow burn, no pedophelia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-06-09 09:33:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 50,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15264570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Order_Of_The_Forks/pseuds/Order_Of_The_Forks
Summary: There are no helpful google results for "what to do when you're being haunted by someone who isn't even dead".Evan knows this as a definitive fact.But the question still remains: if Connor Murphy is alive, how and why is Evan being constantly tormented by spirits of him?





	1. we, with holes in our hearts, were whole at the start

Evan is superstitious.

This is an undisputed fact, half influenced by his upbringing and half by his desperate need to control the world around him. So if centuries of old wives tales tell Evan to throw salt over his shoulder when he spills it and wear blue for good luck, he’ll do it, no matter how weird it seems.

There is a difference, however, between knocking on wood to counter a jinx and having a small boy appear in your house unexpectedly.

The boy sits in Evan’s desk chair, his legs dangling above the ground as he twists the chair back and forth.

“Please stop,” Evan says. “You’re going to give me a headache.”

The boy doesn’t stop, though. Just swings his feet in the air and sucks on his red-and-white striped candy cane.

“What-what’s your name?” Evan asks. He doesn’t know if the boy has a name, after all, he was just... there when he woke up. Maybe he’s an orphan. Maybe he’s a ghost.

“Connor O-gwen Murphy,” the boy says proudly. 

Evan’s heart stops. Connor Murphy. It’s got to be a different Connor Murphy, right? Not the Connor Murphy from school, the scary one who everyone says does hard drugs whenever he skips class. 

He never believed the rumors, but they were hardly outside of the realm of imagination.

“Con-Connor Murphy? Do-do you have a, um, a sister?” 

“Yep!” The boy, Connor, says. “She’s four an’ her name’s Zoe.”

So if Zoe’s four, that means that, if this is truly Connor, Evan’s Connor, the kid is six. “Do you, um, do you know how you got here?”

“Nope!” Connor responds, sucking happily on his candy cane. “I jus’ got here.”

“Are- are you real?”

“I think so,” he says. “I feel real. Hey, what if you hit me? Then if I feel it I’ll know if I’m real.”

“I-I’m not punching a kid.” Evan feels like he’s hallucinating. He did take his meds last night, he’s positive of that. 

“Do you like Spiderman?” Connor asks, halting any thoughts Evan might be having. 

“Uh… no? I’ve, uh, never watched any of the movies.”

“What ‘bout the comics?” Connor is leaning forward in his seat, and his feet are swinging madly. “Can you read? How old are you?”

“I’ve- I’ve never read any of the comics, either.” A sharp pain has started in Evan’s temples. “I’m seventeen. I’m a senior in high school.”

“Seventeen is old. I’m only six.” Connor has that all-knowing voice that little kids get when they talk about things like how old they are, their siblings, or their favorite movies (or comics, in this case). 

“I know,” Evan says, pressing his palm against the side of his face.

“How do you know? Are you a-a staker?” 

Evan gets the impression that Connor’s parents aren’t the type to correct the way he says things because they think the mistake is adorable. And he has to agree, little Connor is pretty cute. His brown hair is curly and short, and his face is heart-shaped and elvish with a smattering of freckles across his nose. He smiles conspiratorially, a thin mischievous grin, lopsided and awkward.

“No. I-I just, um, assumed.” Evan forces a smile. 

“Oh.” Connor looks a little disappointed to have not caught a real life ‘staker’ in the flesh. 

“Hey. Do you, um, want to come downstairs and-and I could make you some, uh, hot chocolate. Would you like that?” Evan asks. 

“Yeah!” Connor says, nodding quickly. 

Evan stands up and stretches. He beckons for Connor to follow him downstairs into the kitchen, where he sits him down at the table and goes about making the hot chocolate.

“So,” he says as he pours the mix into the mug, “do you, uh, maybe have parents I could call, or-“

But when he turns around Connor is gone, leaving Evan with a mug of hot chocolate, a throbbing headache, and more questions than answers.

 

-

 

When Evan’s mom comes home, she doesn’t seem to know about the kid who was just in her house.

She does, however, ask about the smell. When Evan looked up how to keep away ghosts, it said to hang hazelnuts and garlic around the house and to place your shoes at the foot of your bed, one facing towards the bed and one facing away. They didn’t have hazelnuts, so Evan had to do with old garlic cloves from the spice cabinet and hope that it would work.

“What’s that smell?” She says as soon as she walks in the door. “Evan, did you cook something?”

Evan sits at the kitchen table with a now-cold cup of hot chocolate the same way he had for what seemed like hours. “No. It’s just garlic.”

“What were you doing, keeping away vampires?” Heidi teases. 

Evan frowns. “Ghosts.”

She laughs softly, and the noise sounds like the ringing of a bell. “Okay.”

Evan wonders if hallucinations are a side effect of his new medication. Sleep aids usually don’t do things like that, but you never really know what such a cocktail of drugs will do to your body. “Do you, um… I’m going to go. Check something out.”

“But I just got home!” She protests. And Evan feels guilty.

“It’ll be quick.” Evan runs upstairs and desperately checks the label of the bright orange pill bottle on his bedside. Burning or tingling in arms, feet or legs. Changes in appetite, constipation, diarrhea. Dizziness. Daytime drowsiness. Nothing. A wave of helplessness washes over him. Evan is going crazy and there is no way to explain it. Unless the kid actually was in the house and had left somehow when he wasn’t looking… 

“Evan?” Heidi calls from downstairs. 

Right.

Evan nearly trips over his moved-around shoes leaving. And even though ghosts are pretty bad, Evan doesn’t think he can handle having his shoes all mixed up forever.

But tripping over shoes seems to be a pretty mediocre price to pay to not have little ghost boys drive you insane.

On the way downstairs, Evan inspects the wall for sticky fingerprints. The kid’s hands were covered in candy cane residue, and Evan remembers dragging his fingers against the wall as a kid. 

But there’s nothing. No fingerprints, no traces anyone in the house except Evan. The same faint traces of humanity that had been filling the house the whole summer. The only clues to any life in the house are barely there: chinese takeout containers in the trash, a halfway-drunk glass of water on the counter, the musty smell of an old shower. Evan can’t wait for school to start, even if only to escape the void of his house.

“Hey, Evan?” Heidi calls from downstairs. “We don’t have any food in the house and my stomach is about to eat itself. I’m going to the store, do you want to come?”

Evan pauses and stares at the wall, at the fingerprint smudges along the paint, shoulder-height and not at all six-year-old hands. Evan places his own hand against them. “I, uh, I have stuff to do.”

“If you come, I’ll let you pick what flavor ice cream to buy!” Heidi barters. And Evan troops downstairs, not motivated by his mother’s bribe but by the pleading in her voice. The desperate attempts to connect with her son.

“Great,” she says when Evan appears in the doorway. “Just for coming, I won’t buy those Trader Joe’s dumplings you hate so much.”

“I don’t-“

Heidi grazes her hand agains Evan’s shoulder, as if confirming his reality. “I know you hate them, honey. Come on, I want to go before everything closes.”

Evan walks mutely with his mother to the car, where the radio starts to play some sort of country song, upbeat and full of fiddle, to which Heidi wrinkles her nose. However, she neglects to change the station.

It’s a comforting song that feels vaguely like summer camp. Rock me mama, or something.

Evan can feel himself slipping out of the world, collapsing in on himself as the fiddles play tonelessly in his ears. But it isn’t an altogether unpleasant experience. This time, the chasm in his chest he retreated to was warm and cozy. Not like the cave it usually was. 

The radio switches songs, and Evan doesn’t even realize he had closed his eyes until he opens them to see the grocery store in all its fluorescent glory. Evan wants to sleep in the heat of the car until the afternoon fades into dusk and his face sticks to the sweaty leather of the car seat.

But instead, he follows Heidi inside like an obedient dog. “Can you get, uh…” Heidi scans the list. “Can you get some pasta? Whatever kind you want. I want to do some actual cooking tonight.” She looks too happy about this. 

Evan nods and wanders the aisles until he finds the shelves of pasta. He chooses a box of spaghetti and walks back, trying to find his mother again. There’s someone seated by the dairy, scribbling furiously in a composition notebook. When Evan walks by, the person lifts their head and brushes their long hair from their face. They grin, and the smile is eerily familiar. 

“Evan?”

Heidi emerges from the aisles to find Evan standing there. When he looks back, the person is gone. A piece of paper rests on the butter, and without thinking, Evan crams it in his pocket.

“I’ve got the pasta.”

Heidi takes the spaghetti from Evan’s hands and places it neatly in the cart. “What was that paper?”

“Oh. It was. Um.” Evan’s hand finds its way to the paper, where he touches the ripped edges as if to make sure the paper hadn’t disappeared like its author had. “Something from school, uh, fell out of my pocket.”

An obvious lie, as school wasn’t starting for another three days. But Heidi buys it.

On the drive home, the radio plays pop music and the pint of strawberry ice cream freezes Evan’s hands, even inside its bag. The paper in his pocket is aggressively There and Evan wants to take it out and read it but he can’t, not just yet. Not while his mom is sitting next to him, mumbling along to some sugary soprano whose notes Heidi can’t quite hit. 

His mom makes spaghetti and some boxed meatballs and uses the entire can of tomato sauce, something Evan would’ve prefered she hadn’t done. Even though he knows it’s stupid and childish, Evan had always preferred his pasta with just plain butter instead. As they eat and engage in mediocre conversation, Evan can only think of the piece of paper in his pocket and whoever had dropped it. 

“I bet senior year is going to be great for you,” Heidi says. “I’m sure you’ll make lots of friends.”

“What do you know about ghosts?” Evan asks, except he doesn’t. Instead, he says, “yeah.”

“Promise me you’ll reach out to people.” Heidi takes a bite of pasta. “I know it’s hard, but you need to make connections.” She points her fork at her son. “I don’t want another year of you sitting at home on your computer saying you don’t have any friends.”

“I found a weird note at the store,” Evan says. “Want to see it?” But he doesn’t. He just frowns and says, “me neither.”

There is nothing good that can come out of a mysterious paper left by a mysterious stranger in the grocery store, Evan thinks. The paper is in his hand and his bedroom door is locked. Heidi is downstairs, watching TV.

Unaware.

Evan unfolds the paper. It’s folded neatly in quarters, one edge jagged and ripped like it was torn from a notebook. The first line almost makes his heart stop. 

There across the top of the page, in handwriting that is not his own, are the words, “Dear Evan Hansen.”

It was for him. The note, the person in the dairy aisle. It was all meant for his eyes to see.

There’s a small paragraph in the middle, and in the margin the same hand has scrawled, “DON’T CHEAT. DON’T LIE.” over and over again like in those horror video games Jared makes Evan watch him play. 

Evan stands up and checks outside, half expecting the shadowy form of a man waiting on the lawn with an axe or something. 

The paragraph in the middle seemed to be some sort of poem, one that Evan couldn’t really comprehend.

“I would leave fond farewells to friends  
If that’s what they happened to be  
And all the harm that e’er I’ve done,  
Alas, it was to none but me  
I leave behind this broken life  
And give to you my lone goodbye  
Don’t be a liar, know your desire,  
Thus with a kiss I die.”

Evan doesn’t want to believe this. 

He doesn’t want to think of the possibility that someone he had never met in the grocery store A) knows who he is, and B) had chosen to write him what looks vividly like a suicide note.

Isn’t it?

Evan’s stomach lurches and he’s tasting old, acidic pasta and for a second, Evan is positive that he’s going to puke all over his bed and the paper. 

But the nausea goes away, and Evan is left with a sick feeling and a sinking hunch that somebody just died. A stranger in the dairy aisle has died and Evan is the only one who has the suicide note.

Tomorrow, Evan is going to look through the obituaries.


	2. some things were never meant to last

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the first day of school.

The first day of school comes far too early. Evan isn’t excited to have to explain (lie about) how he broke his arm and go to stressful new classes and have to give the note from his therapist to all his teachers, saying that he needs to have extra time during tests because he’s prone to breakdowns in the middle of them. 

He is, however, excited to have something to do other than obsessively google things about ghosts and frantically check the obituaries in the newspaper and googling things like “recent suicides Newton county.” 

Anything other than reading that note again.

Evan had it taped to the wall beside his bed so while he waited for sleep to come, he could read it and think about what it meant. Now, though, he rips down the note and shoves it in the deepest corner of his desk drawer. Then takes it out again.

“Dear Evan Hansen.”

There are two people who know about his letters: his mom and his therapist. And they don’t seem like the kind of people to leave a cryptic suicide note in the grocery store for him to find. 

His mom reminds him that he’s going to be late for school if he doesn’t hurry up and have breakfast.

Evan ignores her and instead opens up his laptop and googles “Connor Murphy,” trying different variations of a middle name like the kid Connor pronounced it. 

It turns out Eógan, or Eoghan, is an old Irish name that means “born of the yew.” None of that is helpful, but it’s an interesting fact. 

Google explains that there are people named Conor Eoghan Murphy and some political guy named Eoghan Murphy, but no little boys. No suicides.

Evan feels like he’s underwater.

Jared picks him up at 7:23, three minutes after their agreed time. His mom’s minivan smells like one of those ‘new car’ fresheners, despite it being older than Evan. Jared is a bad driver, but at least he has a license. That’s more than Evan can say. 

Jared parks in the senior lot, taking the space he somehow acquired over the summer. Apparently, incoming seniors were supposed to go to the main office to reserve a parking space, which Evan did not do. Not that he has any reason to. 

Next to his space is a flashy new Jeep with two over-excited teenagers making out in the backseat. On the right is a beat-up old car with scratches all over it and a broken taillight.

“Padiddle,” Jared quips as he gets out of the car, pointing at the back of the car. 

It’s a silly inside joke, an allusion to family car rides and Heidi and Rachel’s seemingly never-ending padiddle game. Jared hasn’t made one of those jokes in a while.

Across the bumper of the padiddle car, someone’s keyed the words, “FUCK YOU ASSHOLE” in messy, childish scrawl. Evan points at the vandalism noiselessly.

Jared snorts. “I wonder what happened.”

I think it’s obvious, Evan says in his head. 

But instead he just shrugs and follows Jared inside.

Evan doesn’t dislike school. He enjoys learning new things and he likes the books they read in English.

He just doesn’t like the people in school. He hates the teeming mass of teenagers who don’t know how to talk without yelling. He doesn’t like his classmates and the people who push past him in the hall without apologizing.

But skipping school is a crime, so Evan just finds his first period class and reminds himself that the school year is only 180 days. 

His first period is bio, and as he makes his way to the 200s he runs into someone who had very recently been at the back of his mind.

Literally runs into.

“Watch where you’re fucking going,” Connor scowls. He pushes past Evan, but before he can escape Jared gets Connor’s attention back.

“Hey, Connor!” He drawls. His voice is mischievous and Evan does not want him to keep talking. “Loving the new hair length. Very… school shooter chic.”

Connor doesn’t respond, but his knuckles whiten around the strap of his messenger bag, covered with pins that Evan really wants to read.

Jared looks uncomfortable. “It was a joke?”

“Yeah, no, it was funny. I’m laughing.” Connor’s voice is dull and betrays no emotion. Not at all the voice of a six year old boy, twirling in a spinny chair and babbling about Spiderman. “Am I not laughing hard enough for you?”

Jared laughs nervously and glances towards the door of his class. “You’re such a freak,” he says, then power-walks into his classroom. 

Evan is left standing facing Connor Murphy, like a duel in the Wild West. And Evan doesn’t have a gun.

He can’t think of anything to say. Should he just walk away?

Evan can feel the note in his pocket, which is ridiculous, because he left it at home in his drawer. But while his hand is preoccupied with trying to inconspicuously feel around for a piece of paper resting against his leg, his mouth blurts, “what’s your middle name?”

Connor is silent for a second, as if stunned by this bizarre question. “What the fuck?” He says finally. 

“Uh…” Evan laughs awkwardly, trying, and failing, to diffuse the tension.

“What the fuck are you laughing at?” Now Evan’s really messed up, because Connor’s dead eyes are lit with fire and he is genuinely scared. “Do you think I’m some kind of freak?” 

Evan shakes his head furiously.

“I’m not a freak!”

And Connor comes at Evan, and his hands connect with Evan’s shoulders, and something in the depths of him is glad that his hands are so sturdy, so Real. 

“You’re the fucking freak!”

Evan is on the ground, toppled by Connor’s skeletal hands like a tree in a storm. 

Evan’s underwater feeling has moved to drowning.

Evan can’t breath because if he breathes, he’ll inhale the water and die. So he just sits there in the hallway, trying to take as shallow breaths as possible. 

The bell rings, and Evan is officially late for the first class of the year.

Someone walks up to him, and Evan’s brain immediately thinks that it’s the principal coming to yell at him for missing class, but it’s a student. He can tell it’s a student because she has a backpack with all sorts of pins on it and the hand she extends has what seems like hundreds of friendship bracelets cluttering her wrist.

“I saw my brother push you,” she says, and Evan realizes it’s Zoe Murphy. The Zoe Murphy.

In her other hand is a guitar case, the hard kind with stickers on it. When Evan stands up he bumps his knee on the case and instead of saying ‘ow’ or something, just says, “sorry.”

Zoe’s still talking. “It was a dick thing for him to do. He’s-“

“Troubled,” Evan says at the exact same time Zoe says “an asshole.”

Zoe eyes him weirdly. “Sure. Troubled. Listen, I’ve got to get to class. Tell me if he messes with you again, okay?”

Evan nods without breathing, because the water is still covering his mouth and his ears are clogged. 

Zoe walks off, the keychains and pins on her backpack jingling. 

After school, Evan waits for Jared in the computer lab. On Tuesdays Jared has robotics and can’t drive Evan home until 3:30, which gives Evan plenty of time to write his Dear Evan Hansen letter for his therapy session on Wednesday night. 

It’s also always empty, which is a plus.

Evan’s just finishing his letter, which is significantly more depressing than usual. Which is fair, because he’s significantly more depressed than usual. But he’s not looking to be shipped off to the nuthouse for seeing ghosts of some kid at his school, so he keeps it vague. 

“There’s Connor, and everything is pinned on Connor, who I don’t even know and who doesn’t know me.”

Evan likes that. He wants to take it out, to completely leave his Connor Murphy-centric psychotic break out of it, but he can’t. So he keeps the line in.

Sincerely, your best and most dearest friend, me.

He saves three times, hits control-P twice, and waits for the printer to spit out the paper. 

The door squeals at it opens. Evan doesn’t look, just focuses on making sure he logs out of his account and shuts down the computer. And there, standing behind him, reflected on the black mirror of the outdated computer screen, is Connor. 

He holds himself awkwardly, fidgeting and keeping himself contained. As if he doesn’t want to take up too much space.

“It’s Eoghan,” Connor says, and it sounds like Owen. Not O-gwan, like little ghost Connor said.

Evan startles. “W-what?”

“My, uh, my middle name? Eoghan. E-o-g-h-a-n,” Connor says hesitantly.

“Cool!” Evan blurts, even though it’s really not that cool, just interesting.

“It’s not cool,” Connor deadpans. “It’s Irish.”

“Oh.”

“So.” Connor’s always moving: touching his hair, scratching his face, putting his hands in his pockets and taking them back out again. “How’d you break your arm?”

Right.

Evan had been supposed to ask Jared to sign his cast in the car, but Jared had sidetracked him by asking if he had broken his arm jacking off.

Which he had most definitely not.

“Oh. I uh, I fell out of a tree?” And it’s really weird, and part of Evan thinks Connor’s going to hit him or something, just for being so weird.

“Fell out of a tree.” Connor repeats. His hands stop moving. “That is just the saddest fucking thing I’ve ever heard, oh my god.”

He lets out a little laugh, and Evan laughs along. Connor eyes his arm. “Nobody’s signed your cast.”

“No, no, I know.” Evan is vividly aware that his white cast is blank, unlike Jackson Worth, who broke his arm in a bike accident and whose cast is covered in signatures from ever girl in school. 

“I can sign it if you want.”

Evan blinks twice. And then twice again. And Connor, real and alive and 17 years old, is standing in front of him, offering to sign his cast.

“No, you don’t have to.” 

Connor just bites his lip and scratches his thigh and says, “do you have a sharpie?”

Unfortunately, Evan’s mom had given him a marker that the morning for this exact occasion. Not, of course, the occasion that the most infamous student at school and Evan’s paranormal tormentor would offer to sign his cast, but the occasion that Evan makes a friend. 

Honestly, a much less likely scenario.

Evan pulls it out and hands it to him.

Connor takes the sharpie, uncaps it with his teeth (which is kind of gross), and grabs Evan’s cast. Instinctually, Evan makes a pained noise, even though it doesn’t hurt, not really. 

Connor looks at Evan for a moment. “Sorry.”

When he’s finished, Evan is labelled with the word “CONNOR” in large, childish block letters that take up the entire cast.

“Oh,” Evan says slowly. “Thanks.”

“Is this yours?” Connor holds up a sheet of paper Evan hadn’t even noticed he was holding. “I found it on the printer. Dear Evan Hansen, that’s you, right?”

Evan’s stomach drops like a stone. 

He tries to say something reasonable, and chill, but instead he says, “yesandit’sveryimportantcanIhaveitbackplease?”

Connor scans the letter, his eyes stopping near the middle. “There’s Connor, and everything is pinned on Connor, who I don’t even know and who doesn’t even know me.” His voice speeds up as he reads, like he’s trying to cram the words into his mouth as fast as possible. “Is this about me?”

“No! I-“

“Yeah.” Connor’s voice is soft, nervous. He pushes a piece of hair out of his eyes. “You… you wrote this so I would see this. You saw I was the only one in the computer lab so you wrote this so I would find it and freak out, right?”

He’s angry now, and Evan tries to stammer a response, but he can tell Connor doesn’t care what he has to say. 

“So you can tell everyone at school how much of a freak I am, right?” 

Evan can’t say a word. He just reaches for the letter and keeps soundlessly opening his mouth, like a fish. 

“Fuck you!”

And Connor disappears out the door, just like a ghost.

Evan tries to slow his breathing. He’s hyperventilating, and his head hurts. He’s afraid he’s going to vomit.

“Holy shit, dude, are you okay?” 

Evan has never been so excited to hear Jared’s voice.

“Do you need, like, a paper bag or something?” 

“I’mfineJared!” 

“‘Cause you’re totally hyperventilating.”

“I’mnothyperventilatingJared!”

“Whatever you say, man.” Jared is silent for a second. “Seriously, dude. You good?”

“Just…” Evan doesn’t know what to say. No, he’s not good. He hasn’t been good since fourth grade. “Let’s go home.”

In the car, Jared plays Africa by Toto on repeat and Evan doesn’t have the guts to ask him to turn it off. He gets the feeling Jared is playing it as some sort of test.

The house is quiet and forlorn, just like it always is.

Evan’s cereal bowl is still on the counter, and somehow the sight of it makes his stomach twist. 

In his desk drawer upstairs, the note is folded neatly, tucked snugly between a case of unused pencils and a forgotten granola bar. Evan doesn’t need to read it to remember what it says.

Don’t cheat. Don’t lie.

The words echo in his head, harmonizing with a mantra of “Connor Eoghan Murphy.”

And Evan is branded, practically. Connor’s large scrawl is emblazoned on his arm, a serial killer’s clue to mark the crime as their own. 

Evan feels like a mouse being hunted by a cat. He’s being tossed from paw to paw, teased and taunted and played with. But someday, the game will be over and the cat will come for blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (chapter title credit to the wailin' jennys- take it down)
> 
> it is thursday my dudes (aaaaAAAAAHHHHH)
> 
> please comment. i'm dying.


	3. When The Night Was Full of Terrors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jared and Evan bond.

“A letter to yourself? What the fuck does that even mean?”

Evan sighs with exasperation and switches the phone to speaker. Jared keeps blabbering on while Evan dumps a pile of leftover Chinese food onto a plate and sticks it in the microwave. 

The third Chinese food meal this week.

“Is it like, some kind of sex thing?” Jared is saying. The microwave whirs. 

“No!”

“Then what the fuck does Connor Murphy, sorry, Connor Eoghan Murphy, want with your fucking letter to yourself?” Jared’s voice sounds strained, like he’s trying not to laugh. 

“I don’t know!” Evan is fully aware that his voice is high and annoying, but he’s panicking, and there’s nothing he can do about it now. 

“Dude, why didn’t you tell me about this earlier? Like, when I was driving you home?”

“I don’t know!” Evan screeched. “But I have a session tomorrow night and I don’t have time to write another and Connor has the only copy!”

“Well, you are in quite the predicament, my friend.”

“What do I do? How do I get it back?”

Jared scoffs. “Get it back? Evan, Connor Murphy is batshit out of his mind. You’re never getting it back, that’s for sure.”

“What- what do you think he’ll do with it?” Evan’s voice is soft. Scared. 

Connor Murphy is a loose cannon and Evan just gave him the perfect cannonball. The only thing to do is shoot.

“He’s gonna ruin your fucking life with it.” There’s a pause. “I know I would.”

 

~

 

Evan can’t sleep. It’s a full moon, and Evan’s blinds have been broken for weeks, which means that the moonlight is streaming into his bedroom and making it impossible to feel tired. 

Plus, there’s a weird noise from down the hall. A sort of thumping. Evan tells himself it’s just the dryer, and for a while he believes it.

His window is open, and there’s a dog barking outside somewhere. Loud and irritating and incessant. 

A couple of people walk by on the sidewalk just ten feet beneath his window- three teenagers, by the sound of it- chatting and laughing. Evan can hear the flicking of a lighter.

Evan gets out of bed and slams the window shut.

His room is too bright and it’s cold, cold enough that Evan doesn’t want to move and touch the parts of the mattress not warmed by his body heat. 

The thumping continues, but now it’s accompanied by a rattling that Evan can’t place.

There’s a side table in the hallway just outside his mother’s room where their framed pictures and little knicknacks live. The inventive side of Evan’s mind tells him that the sound is the sound of someone kicking the table. Kicking the wall next to the table, maybe. Making the little candles and the carved wooden loons shake with each kick.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Evan is properly scared. His mind has decided that someone is kicking the wall. Not his mom, that’s for sure. An intruder.

Someone who wants to take all their stuff and murder them brutally in their beds. Probably with an axe. 

Maybe an axe would be too easy. The murderer will probably use a really small knife and have to plunge it into Evan’s back a million times for him to die, and even then he’ll stay alive in excruciating pain before finally dying. 

And he won’t scream because he never was a screamer and besides, he doesn’t even know if he remembers how. So the cops won’t come and no one will think to question their mysterious absences for a while, at least long enough for them to rot and all the evidence is rotted off their bodies and they never catch the killer because no one cares enough about the Hansens to check in on them. 

Evan takes a deep breath.

Most of him wants to wait for his mom to hear the sounds and deal with it herself. But the tiniest pocket of bravery tells him to get up and figure out what it is for himself. 

Evan, after a solid thirty seconds of mental debate, throws off his covers and stands up, where he mentally argues with himself for another minute before making his way to the door. At the door, Evan stands with his hand resting on the doorknob for another minute before slowly opening it to a dark hallway. 

There’s very little light, and everything is vague, blurry outlines. Evan identifies the side table and then next to it, what looks like the figure of a person. 

Evan blinks and the figure is gone. 

 

~

 

Evan doesn’t see Connor for the rest of the week. He also doesn’t get a lot of sleep, because he’s convinced somebody broke into his house and is hiding somewhere, waiting for him to fall asleep so they can jump out and murder him. 

So Evan goes through the week in a foggy daze. His undereye bags are purple and deep and his skin feels greasy all the time. He’s never felt more disgusting.

Jared gets the flu, so he misses a few days. This leaves Evan with absolutely nothing to do to fill the empty time during the school day. During lunch he scrolls absently through Instagram or reads. Heidi lent him the new prequel to Practical Magic, and he devours the pages under the shade of the bleachers, eager to talk to her about it when she finally gets a break from work. 

Which she doesn’t.

Connor Eoghan Murphy is out of school and Evan doesn’t know how to feel about that. 

The car next to Jared’s is gone, too. Evan misses the car with “FUCK YOU ASSHOLE” keyed into the bumper, the padiddle that reminds him that Jared still cares, at least a little.

So after school on Friday, Evan visits. Jared’s flu isn't contagious anymore, but his parents wanted to play it safe and keep him at home. In all honesty, it’s astounding that two people as cautious and considerate as Charles and Ellen Kleinman managed to raise a disaster like Jared.

Evan knows that’s harsh, but it’s true.

Jared’s playing video games in his room when Evan comes up. When he was little, Evan was jealous that Jared got to have a TV in his room. But then Jared became addicted to screens and started failing reading assignments and Evan was perfectly happy to sit on his back porch and do homework alone. 

“Oh,” Jared says as Evan walks in. “Hey.”

His eyes are bloodshot and he looks like shit, objectively.

“Hey.”

“I’m, uh, I’m playing Fallout 4. If you wanna watch or something.” Jared doesn’t take his eyes off the screen.

Evan sits on Jared’s desk chair and watches as he converses with some woman whose text box says her name is Cait. Her voice sounds Irish. 

“Have you heard that Batshit song? That Beyonce did?” Jared asks. 

“I think it’s called Apeshit?” Evan says. He saw a video about the Louvre doing tours centered around the pieces of art in the video. “And no.”

Jared hums. “Cool.”

There’s stiff, awkward silence. Evan spins in Jared’s swivel chair. Jared curses loudly as his character dies, covering the screen in angry red. 

“What did I miss in school?” Jared asks, finally putting down his remote and turning to face Evan.

“Not, uh, much.” 

“Marilyn Monroe didn’t try to shoot up the school?”

Evan has to process this comment for a second before it clicks. “Do you mean Marilyn Manson?”

“Whatever. The metaphor is still sound.” Jared smirks. “But he didn’t do anything crazy?”

“He’s, uh, he’s been out. I think.”

“Lame.”

Evan keeps spinning the chair until he starts to feel sick. On the TV, Jared can’t stay alive. 

“Have you ever heard of selkies?” Evan blurts, just to fill the silence.

“What? No.” Jared snorts and his character dies again. “What the fuck is that? Like, a kinky sex thing?”

“No! It’s like… so in, um, I think Irish folklore? There are these women. And sometimes men. Who were, like, born seals? And then they go on land and they’re like humans but then eventually they put their seal skin back on and go back to the ocean.”

“That’s weird as shit,” Jared says. “Why the fuck are we talking about this?”

“I-I don’t know.”

“They just- they put on their seal suit and just fuck off into the ocean?”

Evan snickers. “I guess.”

“Tag yourself, I’m the seal dude fucking off back to the ocean.”

“Yeah.” 

Jared dies once more and throws down his controller, falling back onto his bed and staring up towards the ceiling. There’s a homemade dream catcher above his bed. Evan remembers it- he had made one just like it at the weird Quaker summer camp they went to for a year in elementary school.

Evan had loved that camp. The counselors were laid-back and the kids mostly just ran wild in the forest around the camp all day. There was an apple tree with the most sour green apples ever grown and Evan would eat his lunch tucked up in the branches. 

Evan had always thought Jared hadn’t liked the camp, but here was the dreamcatcher. A crappy craft from a hippie camp that Jared’s only real emotional connection to was… Evan.

“I wonder if the word seal comes from the fact that they live in the sea,” Jared muses. “I mean, it makes sense. Sea-l.”

“But where would the L come from?” Evan asks. 

“Well, they can’t have two things called a sea.” Jared says with the confidence of a thousand professors. “That would be confusing.” 

Evan laughs. Jared blows a puff of breath up to the dreamcatcher, making the fake purple feathers flutter. 

“Do you want to stay over?” Jared asks. He sounds nervous about this preposition. “Like, sleep over.”

“Uh…” Evan knows he has nothing planned tomorrow. There’s no reason for him to refuse. “I don’t have pajamas.”

“Please. You’ve left enough clothes at my house for an entire wardrobe. I’m sure we’d be able to find you something.”

The dreamcatcher twists and moves from Jared’s breath. “O-okay.”

That night, the rain beats against the roof and holds the boys in a lull of bliss. There is no pounding, no shadows of a person in the dark. Evan is full of spaghetti and ice cream and feels content.

It’s dark in the bedroom, but Evan can tell from his spot on the floor that Jared’s still awake. 

“Do you remember that weird outdoor camp we went to one year?” Evan says softly.

Jared rolls over to face Evan. “Yeah.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow it took me two chapters to fuck my schedule into the grave cool  
> Imma be away at camp for three weeks so if I don’t post don’t worry I’ll be back
> 
> Please comment


	4. thought i'd died and gone to hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A call to the office.

On Monday, nothing has changed. Jared plays music in the car that Evan actually likes, although he’d never say. The parking space next to them is still empty.

It’s an ABCDE day, which means Evan’s going to bio first, then English, then chorus, then math, then Spanish. He doesn’t like chorus. Everybody in school is required to take one arts class to graduate. Evan isn’t very good at painting or sculpture, so he doesn’t go for the visual arts. He hates being on stage, so he doesn’t take the theatre class. He was going to sign up for guitar, but Jared told him that was the stoner class. So chorus was the last option. 

In bio, they review a lab they did on Friday. Evan’s taking notes on errors he made during the lab when the loudspeaker hisses to life.

“Evan Hansen, come to the main office. Evan Hansen, come to the main office. Thank you.”

The class’s eyes are on him. One kid jokingly goes, “ooh!” like they’re in second grade. 

Evan slowly stands up, packs his bag, and takes a hall pass from the teacher. As he walks, the yellow pass burns into his vision. He shoves the paper in his pocket.

He walks slowly. There’s nothing good that can come out of a trip to the office. Nobody’s ever been called up to be surprised by a thousand-dollar check. There are three reasons someone would be brought to the office: they’re in trouble, they have permission to leave early, or someone’s died.

The secretary at the front desk looks up from her computer screen. “Pass?”

Evan fishes the crumpled yellow paper from his pocket and pushes it across the desk. She reads it and frowns, doing some stuff on her computer. Maybe putting him in the system? “See Mr. Ache.”

“He’s, uh, he’s not my counselor? Ms. Welsch is.” 

The secretary sighs and types something, her nails clicking on the keyboard. “It seems you’re right, but I was told for you to go to Mr. Ache’s office. So please. His office is right around the corner.”

Evan shoots her an awkward smile. “Thanks.”

She goes back to her computer.

In Mr. Ache’s room is Mr. Ache, of course, and two people Evan’s never seen in his life. He backs out of the doorway. “I, uh, I must be in the wrong-”

“Evan?” One of the people asks. She’s mom-ish, in a floral blouse and slim black slacks. “Are you Evan?”

“Yeah? I mean, um, that’s me? But, I, um, I don’t… know you?”

“No, I don’t think so,” she says, glancing at the man, who Evan thinks is her husband. “But you know our son.”

Evan’s heart is beating at supersonic speeds. “I do?”

“You’re Connor’s friend, right?” The man says. 

Evan feels his heart stop. “What?”

“Connor Murphy?” The man asks expectantly. 

“I-”

“I mean, he certainly seemed to think you were friends. ‘Best and most dearest friends.’” The woman says with a stiff laugh. Something about that phrase sets off warning bells in Evan. 

“He-” the man stops. He picks up a piece of paper from between where the two are sitting. “We think he wanted you to have this.”

Evan takes the paper. 

It’s his letter. His therapy letter. His creepy, awful therapy letter that Connor stole and now his parents have it and think it’s Connor’s.

“No,” Evan blurts. “Nonono, you’ve got it all wrong.”

“It’s for you,” the woman pushes. “He wanted these to be his last words. To you.”

And it all comes back. The grocery store suicide note. The weird ghosts. “His… his last words?”

“Connor…” the man begins.

“Connor attempted suicide,” the woman says, her voice tight. “This was all we found with him.”

“And,” the man says, handing him another sheet of paper, “this. We can’t figure out what this is.”

It’s sheet music. The paper is slightly too short; the top of the sheet is cut off. No song title, just music. The music is in three part harmony. Evan scans the music. “What-”

One line jumps out. “And all the harm that e’er I’ve done, alas, it was to none but me.”

Evan knows this line. He knows it by heart.

“Connor didn’t- he couldn’t- he didn’t write this!”

“He’s in shock,” the woman says, half to herself.

“He’s- I- this- he didn’t write the letter. He just- he didn’t!”

The woman looks sympathetic. “It’s okay, sweetie. He’s fine. He’s going to be in the hospital for a little bit, maybe you could stop by?” 

“I- I can’t.”

“That’s fine. Do whatever you need to process. My name’s Cynthia, and this is my husband, Larry. We’re here for you, okay?”

The man, Larry stands up. “Did you know?” He says suddenly.

“Know… know what?”

“Did you know he was… like this?” Larry says. He’s forceful with his words, as if they’re hard to say. “He never let any of us in. If you, you know, knew…”

“What does it mean?” Cynthia interrupts. The Murphys are starved for answers, for clarity. “‘And there’s Connor, and all my hope is pinned on Connor, who I don’t even know and who doesn’t know me.’ What does it mean?”

“Nono, I-” Evan stands up too quickly. In his right hand he still has the sheet music. “I need to get back to class. I-I’m sorry.”

When he leaves, he glimpses Cynthia’s shattered face. Larry’s stance. Evan can’t see. 

The floor is slippery and Evan stumbles as he runs through the halls. He’s crying, though he doesn’t quite know why. He finds his way to the bathrooms, where he locks himself in the first stall. Evan sits there so long the motion-sensored lights shut off. He waves his arms and they click back on, humming to life. 

The bathroom stall is covered in graffiti. 

Evan cries. 

He’s always had a weirdness about crying. In a way, it’s cathartic. Scientifically, the crap that’s making you feel one emotion so strongly is all coming out, and so scientifically, you’re supposed to feel better after crying.

But on the other hand, it’s gross and messy and it makes Evan’s face hot and itchy and he never feels better after.

The bell rings and Evan peels himself from the floor. In some bizarre stroke of Providence, in comes Jared, who does a double-take at seeing his ‘family friend’ at the sinks.

“Oh. Hey?” Jared says, uptalking in his confusion.

“Hi,” Evan mumbles, splashing lukewarm water in his face. 

“Were you, um…” Jared shuffles his feet awkwardly. “Didn’t you get called to the office? Was it about your computer?”

Evan blinks. “What about my computer?”

“Nothing.” 

For a moment it’s quiet aside from the running water. Jared clears his throat.

“I have study next period,” he says. “Wanna ditch?”

Normally, Evan would say no. But he’s drained and he’s just so, so tired. So he nods and lets Jared shoulder his backpack and lead him out the school doors, past the hawk-eyes of the secretaries and the Murphy parents hovering by Zoe’s locker, waiting nervously for their daughter to come out from class. 

It rains that night. The thumping ceases. 

Evan finds the song and listens to folk music until his heart beats in time to “Dh’èirich mi moch madainn cheòthar.”

Everything is wrong but somehow, Evan finds himself easily falling into silent, forgettable dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey so i um ruined my schedule but that's fine and good okay  
> please comment please


	5. the stale cold smell of morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Memory.

There’s a park down the street from Evan’s house. It’s small and sort of sad, with one slide and three swings and various pieces that nobody really knows their intended use. The kids enjoy them, though, climbing all over the vague playstructure. Evan never really went there as a kid, as he never had anyone to take him. 

It’s a misty day, though, and Evan makes the short walk to the park, where he sits on an uncomfortably wet swing and just slowly sways back and forth. Part of him is petrified that someone from school will see him at a sad playground alone in the rain and he’ll never let it down. On the other hand, he’s too tired to care. 

In the forest framing the small park the figure of a child darts between the trees. Evan is tempted to call out and ask where the kid’s mom is, but he holds his tongue. After a few minutes, the kid runs wildly out from the treeline. It’s a young boy, and he’s alone. As he gets closer, Evan’s heart sinks like a stone. That curly brown hair. That lopsided smile.

Connor Eoghan Murphy is six years old and here and running at full speed directly towards Evan. 

He has a t-shirt with a smiling jack-o-lantern on it, as if he’s dressed for Halloween. As he runs, his mouth moves. It takes Evan a few seconds to realize he’s talking. 

Connor’s running at reckless abandon, and above the rain Evan can hear him yell, “chase me, Mom!”

As Connor’s rounding towards the swing set where Evan sits, he stops abruptly. “Why?” He says, unprompted. Little Connor, who has always looked so real, looks fuzzy. The edges of his outline are just slightly blurred, as if Evan’s seeing through a camera lens.

There’s a pause, and then he repeats, “why?”

Another pause. Connor looks like he’s listening to something. He turns and stares into the distance as if looking up at another person who’s not there. “But you just sit at home all day!”

Against his better judgement, Evan feels a little offended at that. He scoffs involuntarily, but Connor doesn’t notice.

“I would be able to hurry up better if you would let me run,” Connor says, as if it’s the most obvious fact in the world. 

Evan’s head hurts. There’s another sound mixed with the wind, and Evan strains to hear. It’s the voice of a woman, in the middle of a sentence, “-right into the street. Remember when Cole broke his leg because he got hit by-”

The voice fades away. Evan tries to find the voice again, but all he gets is a ringing in his ears. 

Connor looks up at the sky. “But it’s so nice out! I wanna run!”

Evan looks up too. The sky is a sickening gray, and the rain is coming down in sheets.

Connor frowns. “But Zoe went to that party on Monday! You said if I cleaned my room I could go to the Hallween party.”

So Connor thinks it’s Halloween. Or more accurately, ‘Hallween’. Evan gets the strange feeling that he’s walked into a memory. His temples ache.

“Really? The special pupkin ice cream?”

Through the wind Evan can hear the woman’s voice chiding, “now what do you say?”

A grin splits across Connor’s face. “Thank you!”

 

~

 

Evan walks home from the park and arrives soaking wet and disheveled. He expected to take a nice hot shower and curl up in bed, pondering the events of the day. What he doesn’t expect is Heidi Hansen to be waiting for him.

“Evan!” She exclaims as he walks in the door. “Where have you been? Goddamnit, you’re soaking wet!”

“I was- I was at the park?” 

“Why the hell were you at the park in this weather?” Heidi insists.

Evan looks to the ground. “I-I’m sorry. Don’t be mad? Please?”

Heidi tuts and pulls her son into a hug. She’s warm and dry and smells like soy sauce and hospital. “Honey, I’m not mad. I just… I came home expecting you to be here, and you weren’t and… it’s just such a sinister day outside, you know? I assumed the worst.”

Evan thinks back to the little Connor ghost at the park. “Yeah. It’s-it’s definitely sinister.”

Heidi shivered. “I hate days like this. Hey, I stopped by the Dragon Chef and got us some Chinese for dinner. Wanna crack open a box of dumplings and watch something? I’m in the mood for an Orange Is the New Black binge. What do you say?”

Her face is tentative. He knows she thinks he’ll turn her down; he’ll make up an excuse of homework or that he’s just too tired. Evan remembers how happy Connor seemed when he talked to his mom. He remembers that same woman sobbing in the guidance office, desperately clinging to what, for all she knows, seems to be his suicide note. A suicide not addressed not to her or her husband or her daughter but to a boy she’s never met before. 

So Evan shrugs and says, “sure. Can I change first?”

 

~

 

In the middle of the seventh episode of the first season, Evan’s phone buzzes. He’s set his phone to vibrate, unlike Jared, who keeps his phone completely silent, because he figures the only person who texts him is his mom, and if his mom is texting him, it’s probably important and he might as well see it. 

But his mom is enthralled in the TV and her phone is lying dormant on the coffee table next to a box of fried rice. Evan picks up his phone to read the text. It’s nobody he knows, that’s for sure. But the text is… weird. Weird enough to open and read again in the app, as opposed to offhandedly glancing at it as it pops up on his lock screen (which is a very nice picture of a forest. Jared teases him about it, but it makes Evan happy, and that’s all that matters, right?).

Unknown number:  
Do you like Halloween?

Evan reads it a few times over. Could it be a wrong number? It’s very possible. Once Jared got a wrong number text that said “sorry, can’t talk right now” and Jared, without a second thought, had texted back, “you never could. I’m sorry, it’s over.”

Evan never had the courage to do that kind of thing.

A typing bubble showed up on the screen. After a few seconds, it disappeared, only to reappear again before the following message was sent:

Unknown number:  
I think it’s pretty cool

Evan didn’t even have time to think about that text before another was sent.

Unknown number:  
This is Connor Murphy btw

Connor Murphy?

Evan looked back at his mom, who was still watching the screen. Four texts were sent in rapid succession, making Evan’s phone almost vibrate out of his hand.

Unknown number:  
Sorry that was really weird

Unknown number:  
I just think it’s a cool holiday? And the history and shit is pretty interesting. 

Unknown number:  
I used to be really into it as a kid

Unknown number:  
This is so weird i’m sorry nevermind

Evan’s internal motor was overheating. His head hurt. With shaking fingers, he slowly typed a response.

Me:  
How did you get my number?

The reply was almost instantaneous.

Unknown number:  
Long story

Evan considered brushing it off. But then the years of fear of stalkers and murderers from the dark web set in and if Connor Murphy could find his phone number, didn’t that mean anybody could?

Still, he didn’t have the nerve to text back. Connor Murphy was volatile, he knew that. Besides, he had just attempted suicide. Evan didn’t want to… set him off.

Unknown number:  
Fuck. ok. So my freaky ass parents saw the fucking letter i stole from you (like a fucking asshole) and I guess they found you bc they ended up using the town directory or some shit and tracking down your number and address and all that like stalkers and gave it to me

Unknown number:  
Speaking of which you probably shouldn’t put your number on facebook 

Evan’s head hurts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wowowow  
> Ootf?? Posting on a Thursday?? Wild
> 
> I wrote this in a day lmao it’s shit
> 
> PLease comment i thirst


	6. her course was set by destiny, and no helmsman's hand could change her

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new character is added to the Pokedex of ghosts.

Connor doesn’t text back after that.

Neither does Evan.

His text messages taunt him. Evan can’t even pick up his phone. 

He takes his phone number off of Facebook, like Connor advised him to. Although, does that seem like surrendering? 

It isn’t until Evan is lying awake, the thumping ceaselessly pounding from down the hall, that Evan begins to think that maybe the Connor that texted him isn’t… Connor.

If there’s the little Connor, who knows how many weird things there could be? The man in the grocery store, too. But then again… 

Technology was a can of worms Evan had not thought to open.

Evan spends the night worrying himself himself to the point of an aching migraine, and when his mother checks in on him- he never has his light on this late- she finds him curled up in his bed, clutching his pillow as if to squeeze the stuffing out of it. 

“Evan? What’s wrong?” She asks, sitting on the edge of his bed.

Evan feels guilty. She should be asleep, getting rest before she wakes up at 4 am to start her morning shift. 

“It’s- it’s nothing. I just- don’t worry. Please just go back to sleep.”

Heidi chuckles softly. “Honey, I was just called in for a night shift. I’m about to leave. If you’re sick, though, I can stay.”

“No!” The last thing Evan wants is for her to miss a shift because he’s being irrational. “No. I’m fine.”

“If you’re sure.” Heidi says. “Remember, I’m only a call or a text away.”

Evan, with great difficulty, nods. 

“Okay.” Heidi tenderly brushes a hand over Evan’s head and he feels like melting, just from one motherly touch. He really is pathetic. “I’ll be home in the morning.”

She clicks off the light as she leaves, and Evan is thrust into darkness. 

As soon as he hears the front door slam, a thumping starts. Except it isn’t the same thumping as before. The usual noise is a steady, rattling dull thing. This sounds more like… a rhythm?

The beat is fast and almost unnoticeable, but it’s there. And it’s coming from above Evan. 

The wind whistles loudly, accompanying the rhythm from above Evan’s head. 

It sounds like someone’s drumming on the roof. 

In a flash of terrifying remembrance, Evan realizes that there’s a door in the attic that leads out to the roof. And almost as if his mind is not his own, he gets up to investigate.

With every step Evan’s heart beats more and more frantically. His brain is screaming at him to stop, but there is nothing he can do as he climbs the ladder to the attic and pushes open the tiny door. 

Once the door is opened Evan can hear clearly what the noises are. The rhythm is someone doing what sounds like a handclap game on the roof, and the whistling wind is actually singing.

“She answered me quite modestly- I am my mother’s daughter; with me too-ree-aye, fol-de-diddle-daye, dee-ree fol-de-diddle-daye-rie-oh.”

The voice sounds male, and the song is surprisingly high. 

“And won’t you come to my mother’s house, where the moon is shining clearly? I’ll go to the door and I’ll let you in, and the devil the one will hear us. With me too-ree-aye, fol-de-diddle-daye, dee-ree fol-de-diddle-daye-rie-oh!”

The clapping continues as Evan wriggles through the door and onto the roof. He’s never been on the roof before, and the height is just sinking in. 

He walks the ridge of the roof as the singing continues. The singer is sitting on the top of the window overhang by his mother’s room. Their legs dangle over the edge. 

That long hair, that posture…

“When broken shells make Christmas bells, we might then get married-”

Evan stumbles. His foot slips on a wet patch and he skids, catching himself but letting out an involuntary yelp of pain as his ankle twists. The singer turns. 

Connor Eoghan Murphy is sitting on his roof.

“Evan?” He asks.

Evan feels his throat tighten up and of all places to have a panic attack, his roof is not on the top of his list. “I-uh- what are you doing here?”

“I don’t know,” he says slowly. “Where is here?”

“My-my house!” Evan says a bit too loudly. “Roof! My house roof!”

Connor frowns and swings his legs like a little kid. “Oh.”

Evan feels like his knees are going to give out and he has no choice but to steady himself by grabbing onto the weathervane in the shape of a pig that his mom loves so much. 

“Jesus fucking christ. Don’t fall.” Connor’s voice is just too unfeeling, as if he wouldn’t really mind if Evan fell off his roof. 

He’s shaking all over now, partially because of the nighttime chill and also because of the impending presence of a looming panic attack, and the prospect of having a panic attack and falling off the roof is pushing him even closer to a panic attack. 

Connor stands up. He walks across the roof with ease. It almost seems as if he’s floating across the shingles rather than taking careful, measured steps. 

The closer Connor gets the shakier and more disoriented Evan feels. He’s almost positive his knees are going to buckle and in a flash of panic he reaches out and grabs Connor’s arm for balance. As soon as he does his vision seems to short-circuit for a moment, as if his head is full of cotton balls instead of brains. 

He’s standing on his roof in his pajamas and in one hand he grips Penelope the Pig and in the other he holds the arm of Connor Murphy, whose skin is cold to the touch.

“Jesus fucking christ,” Connor repeats. “Do you need to… like, go inside?”

Evan’s about to say no but at the moment, a strong gust of wind could blow him over. And he’s very high off the ground. “I-”

“C’mon.” Connor holds Evan steady and they walk back to the attic door. Evan’s sight keeps flickering in and out, and he’s shaking like a wet kitten, but the moment his feet touch the attic floor, he can breathe again.

Connor is cold, too cold. Evan tries to keep in mind that he’s been out in the night air for probably a while, but it’s… unnerving. Ghost-like.

Ghost-like.

Evan turns to face Connor. He certainly looks real. He has freckles scattered across his face and two scars, one on his chin and one above his right eye. But something about his eyes…

Evan looks into those eyes and his knees turn to pudding. They’re flat, like a badly painted picture. The whites of his eyes are too white and there’s no reflection in them. They’re horrific. Evan knows that those eyes are going to be lurking in his subconscious for too long. 

“Are you real?” Evan mumbles.

Connor hums. “It depends.”

Evan doesn’t respond. How are you supposed to respond to something like that? 

“What’s your definition of real?” Connor lets go of Evan, who stumbles and grabs on to a box of old sweaters. 

“I-I don’t know?”

“Well, that’s no fucking help.” Connor pokes around the attic, pushing boxes aside at random. “How the fuck do you get out of here?”

“If- if you’re- you’re like a ghost, can’t you just, uh, walk through walls?”

Connor shoots Evan a death glare. “Funny.” He picks up a box of Halloween decorations. “Besides, I’m not a ghost. I’m not dead.”

“If you’re not a ghost… what are you?” 

“I dunno.” Connor puts down the box a bit too forcefully. “Does it really matter?”

Evan’s mouth feels like it’s full of static. “Yes!”

“I don’t know,” Connor says slowly. “I don’t know what I am. I just am. Maybe I’m like a… Christmas present kind of thing? An alternate timeline.”

Evan’s vision cuts out for a second and Connor goes transparent. Evan can see every vein and organ in his body and his gut is cluttered with what looks like little rocks. Or pills. The blood in his veins pumps aggressively. Evan blinks and Connor is back to normal, solid and cold. 

“How the fuck do you get out of here?” Connor repeats.

Evan points at the ladder and Connor’s mouth forms a perfect ‘o’. “Alright.”

They climb down and Evan puts up the ladder like he has for years, but everything’s different. Because there’s a seventeen-year-old ghost in his house and there’s still the smell of peppermint in his room from the candy cane of a six-year-old ghost of the same boy, well and alive and in possession of Evan’s phone number.

Connor wanders at random through the house, trailing his hands along the walls and picking up pictures and knickknacks. Evan follows behind

“How did you-” Evan begins, before rephrasing. “Do you know why you’re- why you’re here? Why you, um, why you’re a ghost?”

Connor stops his investigation and stands in the middle of the hallway, facing towards the door to Evan’s bedroom. His arms hang limply at his sides. “‘It's all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it's not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?’” He quotes.

“What?”

Connor jerks a thumb towards the side table. “Anne of Green Gables. You have an antique hardback copy.”

Evan looks back. There are a few books lined up on the side table, but Evan’s never really looked at them. 

Maybe he should.

“Do you, um, like Anne of Green Gables? I-I think I heard there’s a Netflix show now.”

But Connor doesn’t respond. He’s moved on, float-walking down the stairs and singing softly to himself. 

“A’ phiuthrag sa phiuthar, hù rù, ghaoil a phiuthar, hù rù; nach truagh leat fhèin, hò hol ill leò, nochd mo chumha, hù rù.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm posting this chapter early bc i'm probably not going to be able to post on thursday! i'm seeing bmc lmao
> 
> honestly if anybody made fanart or shit of this i would love you forever my insta is snatch_the_hikers and my tumblr is smolweedboi
> 
> TRANSLATION OF WHAT CONNOR IS SINGING AT THE END:  
> Little sister, beloved sister; do you not pity my grief tonight?


	7. a map in despair, a travel in hopelessness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A quiet day.

On Monday, everything returns to normal. Evan carpools with Jared to school and the parking spot next to them remains empty. The paper signs someone put up on Friday are still there, declaring that compost is cool and that there actually are recycling bins in the cafeteria.

Evan’s mind wanders all throughout the day. It’s impossible for him to focus on anything other than Connor Murphy. Little Connor. Fake Connor? Real Connor.

It’s too much. 

Lunch is buffalo mac ‘n cheese, which is known for being the pinnacle of disgusting cafeteria food. Overcooked pasta saturated with cheese sauce that tastes a bit like pennies mixed with chunks of mystery meat. 

Evan takes advantage of his senior privilege and decides to eat off campus.

There’s a Subway near the high school, and Evan plugs in his earbuds and makes his trek across the street. There are a couple other seniors Evan recognizes milling about the Subway, lounging on the cheap leather chairs and chatting in line. Evan gets in line behind two girls. 

“-Not talk about your brother?” One of the girls is saying. “It seems like every time we hang out that’s all you can talk about.”

“I just- I don’t know how to feel, okay?” The other girl is saying. Evan recognizes the voice. “I mean, on one hand, he’s a fucking psycho. But on the other hand, I feel sorry for him, you know? ‘Would anybody notice if I disappeared tomorrow?’ That’s some rough shit, man.”

It’s Zoe. 

Will Evan never be free of the Murphy siblings?

“You’ve said before that you wouldn’t care if he died,” Alana says bluntly.

“That was before he- he could’ve died! I just… everybody says that, okay? You don’t understand because you’re an only child but that’s just- it’s a sibling thing!” Zoe touches her face and Evan realizes she’s crying. “I don’t want him to die.” 

“Shit. I’m sorry.” Alana puts an arm around Zoe and leads her out of the sandwich line. “I’m sorry.” 

Zoe looks up and the waterworks start. “Evan!” She wails.

Evan didn’t know she knew his name.

Is it bad he’s happy about that?

Alana beckons for him to follow. 

Evan trails behind the two, out of the Subway and into the park, where Alana sits Zoe on a bench and gestures for Evan to sit as well.

Zoe’s contained herself at this point. “I don’t know how you’re friends with him,” she says.

“I- uh- I’m not? Not really?” 

“Don’t lie,” Zoe says.

Don’t cheat. Don’t lie. 

Don’t lie. Don’t lie. Don’t lie.

She sighs. “I mean, I guess I’m glad. He’s a massive fucking dick and a life-ruiner, but maybe he would be… less of a dick if he had a friend.”

Evan smiles and nods.

“I’m sorry I’m being such a freak right now. Like, I’m usually not like this. It’s just… a lot.” Zoe shrugs. “It’s not like this is even the first time he’s done this shit. This is just the first time it’s…” 

“Real,” Evan offers.

Crap.

Zoe turns and grins uneasily. “Yeah. Real.”

Crap retracted.

“We should go back soon,” Alana says. “We’re not even supposed to be here.”

“Ah, fuck senior privilege.” Zoe bumps Evan’s shoulder with her own. Evan blushes in spite of himself. “Sorry. Not you.”

Alana stands up. “Lunch is almost over,” she says, even though it’s not.

“We’re Irish,” Zoe says. She’s not really talking with purpose, just talking for the hell of it. “Did he tell you that?”

“I guess,” Evan says, which isn’t technically a lie. “He sings a lot of folk music.”

She laughs, and her laugh is like Connor’s as a child, light and breathy, studded with short snorts. Evan doesn’t know if he’s ever heard the older Connor laugh. 

“That he does.” Zoe snickered. “Has he sung Bring Me A Little Water yet?”

“Uh- no.”

“Fuckin’ shame.”

“Really, Zoe, we should get going-”

Zoe laughs. “You should hear him sing ABBA. Holy-fucking-shit, is that an experience.”

“A-ABBA?”

“His ringtone is the chorus to Super Trouper.” Zoe stands up and grabs her bag. Alana looks relieved. “You didn’t know this?”

Evan stands up too. “I, uh, he never got many calls around me?”

That’s not technically a lie, right?

“That’s why, dude. It’s safe.” 

“Oh.”

Alana grabs Zoe’s arm. “C’mon.”

Evan waves goodbye to the two and watches their backpacks walk away. “Zoe!” he yells out impulsively, then immediately regrets it. She turns. “What hospital is Connor at?”

She grins. “The Beth Israel on Chestnut. I’m sure he would love for you to visit.”

 

~

 

Evan doesn’t visit.

It would be too weird- he doesn’t even really know Connor, and besides, that’s where his mom works.

Instead he gets a ride home when school ends and Jared plays the Mamma Mia soundtrack and it hurts, somehow. 

They stop at Dunkin’ Donuts on the way home. Evan’s not a big coffee person; it’s nothing against caffeine or anything, he just hates the taste. One time he ate coffee ice cream and almost puked. So he gets a breakfast sandwich and they idle in the parking lot while Jared eats a whole box of Munchkins by himself. 

Normally, he would be pissed off that Jared’s not sharing, but he isn’t really in the mood. 

The egg on his sandwich is spongy and artificial tasting, which Jared claims is the “Boston way, baby!”

And Evan doesn’t know why he feels so… off.

As of today, nothing weird has happened. At least nothing supernatural. He has a strange feeling that nothing will happen. He’s learned that he can sort of sense when a ghost is going to show up. It’s a sick feeling that makes Evan think some giant hand is trying to squeeze his intestines up and out of his throat. 

Right now he just feels bad. 

Maybe it’s allergies; his mom always says Evan gets bad allergies in early fall. 

Whatever.

“Whaddya think you’re going to do on Halloween this year?” Jared asks randomly. 

Evan thinks of the little Connor memory, of “Hallween.” Of Connor’s out-of-the-blue texts. 

“I dunno.”

Jared bites into a powdered donut, spilling white all over his black shirt. “Fuck. Well, I was thinking we could get together and watch movies or something. Gorge ourselves on Walmart candy, you know?”

Evan smiles. “What movies?”

“Have you seen the Sixth Sense?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, how about Get Out? I haven’t seen it yet.”

Since freshman year, which was apparently the year when you were officially too old to go trick-or-treating, Jared and Evan had met on Halloween and watched “scary” movies. Neither really wanted to watch actually scary movies, so they always opted for thrillers or movies vaguely relating to Halloween. Mrs. Kleinman makes those weird Pillsbury sugar cookies, the ones with the pumpkins in the middle. Still, every year Jared pretends it’s not a tradition. Always proposes the idea anew. 

Evan shrugs. “Okay.”

It really isn’t okay. Because Evan’s stomach is in knots and his heart is palpitating but it’s not ghost wrong, it’s just wrong.

If it’s not ghosts, why is he feeling so terrible?

Then it hits him like a ton of bricks and Evan feels like the dumbest person to ever eat a breakfast sandwich. 

It’s anxiety. Evan Hansen, whose entire personality seems to be centered around his fucked up brain, has forgotten what goddamn anxiety feels like. 

Because his whole life is pivoting around Connor Eoghan Murphy and Evan has always dreamed of being able to push his anxiety to the side and not notice it, but not this way.

God, not this way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey his is a very short chapter and kinda shitty but whatever


	8. it's so different from the world i'm living in

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evan makes some underclassman friends.

“I don’t care what you say, they’re meant to be!” 

“Zoe, I’m not arguing with you, but I’m just saying that you seem to be the only person in the world that’s this emotionally invested in the love life of characters in a childhood classic.” Alana says. 

“I don’t fucking care!” Zoe cries. “It’s fate! They’re made and meant for each other!”

Evan is sitting at a table with the juniors, which could be considered social suicide but at this moment is the most reasonable option. When Evan left the lunch line and started to make a beeline for the doors, he saw Alana waving him over, and Evan realizes that he really doesn’t have a choice better than sitting with the band kids. It’s either that or sitting alone on the steps outside, pretending he isn’t cold. Zoe has been ranting for at least ten minutes now, and Alana is trying to be the mediator, but a friendly debate has spiraled out of hand and Evan is hopelessly confused. 

Alana puts a calming hand on Zoe’s arm. “Let’s put it to a vote. Ron and Hermione or Anne and Gilbert?” 

Most of the table votes for Ron and Hermione. 

“You didn’t vote,” Zoe says, pointing at Evan. “We need to do a recount.”

“It’s not a tie even with Evan.” Alana counters. “I’m sorry, but Harry Potter is always going to win.”

Zoe smacks her hands against the table in defiance. “This is bullshit!”

“I agree,” another girl says. Her shirt proudly proclaims, ‘EXPLORE THE OUTDOORS AT CAMP RUNELS’. “Why should one perfectly wonderful couple be held back just because of the name Gilbert? I mean, it’s a terrible name, but I think we should look past the name and look at the character instead.”

Zoe starts banging on the table with more ferocity. “Justice for Gilbert Blythe! Justice for Gilbert Blythe!”

Evan really wishes he could just ask someone what they were talking about. Unfortunately, his teacher held them late and Evan got stuck at the end of the lunch line, so he ended up missing the beginning of the debate. 

“I think we should change the topic,” Alana suggests. “Mr. Biacelli is looking at us.”

“Who the fuck is that?” Zoe asks, pounding her fist one more time.

“The lunch monitor!” Alana whispers-yells. “And you’ve been given too many talking-tos for being loud to be banging on the tables right now.”

Zoe sits down with a huff. “That’s bullshit. Stick it to the man.”

Alana snorts. “Sure. No taxation without representation and all that.”

“I thought you were woke,” Zoe admonishes. “You have a cat named T’Challa, for fuck’s sake.”

“He’s black! It’s thematically appropriate!” Alana says, pushing up her glasses and looking flustered. 

“We’re all plenty woke,” another kid butts in. “Let’s not get all ‘Dear White People’ at the lunch table.”

“Are y’all performing at the winter showcase?” One girl asks.

“The jazz band is doing stuff.” Zoe says. “Same shit we always do.”

“Don’t you like jazz band?” Evan blurts, then immediately regrets saying, has ten junior eyes immediately latch onto him. 

“I mean, yeah. But it gets tiring after a while. There are only so many jazz standards you can play before you want to blow your brains out.” Zoe casually takes a bite of her chicken tenders and shrugs. “It’s like, forgo the Duke Ellington piece and just run me through with your clarinet, you know?”

It was weird to hear Zoe talk so flippantly about gruesome death, when just the other day she was crying over the concept of her own brother’s mortality.

It seemed the people most closely acquainted with death were always the ones quickest to discredit its prevalence.

Evan felt someone walk behind him and he turned to see the retreating back of a short boy with curly brown hair. Evan’s heart stops. Can ghosts come visit him during school? He hopes not; that would be very distracting during classes.

“Joel!”

The boy turns and it’s just a freshman, with a round face studded with acne scars and a Batman t-shirt. He waves at whoever called him and walks past the table, leaving Evan with relief and a palpitating heart. 

“Evan? You good?” Zoe says, snapping him back to reality. “You’re as white as a ghost.”

 

~

 

Evan has a lot of homework, so he gets Jared to drop him right off at home. 

It’s dark and empty in the Hansen house. 

The kitchen still smells onions from that first run-in with little Connor. The scent makes Evan’s eyes water. 

But he grabs himself a bag of chips and heads upstairs, determined to finish his homework early. 

Evan has a math test on Monday, and factorials are likely to beat him to the curb. 

They’re not particularly difficult, he’s just having a weird amount of trouble with them today. He doesn’t know why. He can’t focus- whenever he picks up his pencil his mind starts to wander and leaves him in the dust. 

When Evan was a kid, he had issues with daydreaming. He would sit in class and stare out the window and for an hour he would create fantasy worlds in his head, blocking out everything going on around him. His mom used to say that the school could burn down and Evan wouldn't care, as long as the knight hadn’t slayed the dragon yet. 

His school psychiatrists said maybe he used this as a coping mechanism. He was dissatisfied with his real life so he created idyllic lives in his head to escape. 

Then when he got older he realized that the way his brain worked is that it never stops working. Evan’s brain is constantly moving and working, like cogs in a machine or an old-fashioned spinning wheel. Turning one simple thing into a thread of panic. Just when he was a kid, his brain hadn’t tapped into that neverending database of terror. The hero always won and the world always worked out for the best in the end. 

There’s Evan’s mind going again, thinking about thread and gears when he’s supposed to be doing math homework.

But there’s a sense of peace to it.

Somehow.

Because he’s not stressing about ghosts or anything like that. He’s a teenager who doesn’t want to do his math homework.

And that’s all Evan’s ever wanted, is to be normal enough that his biggest worry is failing the test tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a really short chapter i know i'm sorry
> 
> i'm so excited because the first meeting of my trad group is tomorrow!!!!!!
> 
> please comment do y'all like folk music?? how about abba?


	9. 'cause these chords are hypnotizing, and the whole world's harmonizing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why can't Evan avoid Connor?

“Please join me for the pledge of allegiance.”

The vice principal’s voice crackles through the speaker as every student in homeroom mumbles the pledge in a defeated monotone. One girl standing next to Evan has situated her hands so that at a glance, it looks as if she’s putting her hand over her heart, but in reality, she’s found out a way to subtly flip off the flag. As soon as they finish “with liberty and justice for all,” everyone sits at once, as if pushed into their seats by some invisible force. 

“Please remain standing for a moment of silent reflection.”

It’s sort of a slap to the face of the vice principal that they all sit, but nobody could care less. Regardless, they all silently go about their business, scrolling through Instagram or hastily finishing homework. But the silence is broken by someone awkwardly coughing.

“Is this Ms. Fletcher’s homeroom?” 

Evan looks up.

It’s Connor.

Alive Connor. At least, he thinks so. He’s fidgeting like he did that day in the computer lab. His arms hang limply at his sides and he’s snapping his fingers to no apparent beat. His fingers are moving faster than Evan would think possible.

The aforementioned Ms. Fletcher looks up from her computer. “Yes it is. What are you looking for?”

“Oh. I, uh, I’m in this homeroom now.” Connor coughs again.

Ms. Fletcher knits her brows together in confusion. “Are you sure? I haven’t gotten anything about this…”

Connor fishes a crumpled blue piece of paper from his pocket. “Mr. Batra’s my old homeroom advisor, but his homeroom is turning into an accelerated Latin club.” He scratches the side of his face. “And I take French.”

“I see. Who’s your guidance counselor?”

“Uh- Mr. Ache.”

Evan remembers Mr. Ache’s office. Remembers the crying parents. The letter.

“Okay. I’m going to reach out to him, but you’re welcome to stay here until I get confirmation of the switch.” Ms. Fletcher smiles. “Welcome to our homeroom!”

Connor smiles, although it’s more like a grimace. “Yay…” he says, devoid of enthusiasm, mockingly doing a small fist pump.

He shifts his bag back onto his shoulder and takes an empty seat.

Next to Evan.

He has headphones in and his head is slightly bopping to the beat. He’s just looking around, reading the inspirational posters around the room.

Evan wonders if he wants the letter back. 

There’s a poster on the door showing a picture of a bunch of pencils. The pencil in the middle is dull, whereas the ones around it are all sharpened. The slogan reads, “SURROUND YOURSELF WITH WHO YOU WANT TO BE.”

What dumb poster.

If anything, Evan thinks while looking at the deadened faces of the students around him, we’re all dull. I don’t think there’s a sharpened pencil among us. 

Maybe Connor. He’s sharp.

If there’s one word Evan can use to describe Connor, it’s sharp.

A sharp jawline. Sharp cheekbones. A sharp, pointed nose that hooks down toward his mouth, which is moving almost unnoticeably to his music. 

Evan realizes he’s staring.

A sharp pencil that Connor has in his hand and is using to draw on the skin peeking through the holes on the knees of his jeans. Evan can’t really tell what exactly he’s doing, but Connor’s creating entrancing white lines across his knees and Evan can’t physically look away. 

Connor licks his thumb and rubs it over his knee and the lines disappear. He looks up to meet Evan’s eyes with a disinterested stare. “What?”

Evan clears his throat. “Uh- nothing.”

Connor ‘hmphs’ and resumes his poster reading. 

Sharp tongue.

Connor’s words are pointed, they’re purposeful. Not like Evan, whose words fall out of his mouth in a meaningless jumble. 

Evan was never a good singer. Once he was going to audition for a school musical, but he could never get the song right. Either he messed up the words or they came out with no emotion whatsoever. Granted, it was a love song, so the emotion was a bit of a stretch, but he spent so much of his energy worrying about the notes and rhythms being right to even think about how the character was feeling in that moment. 

He didn’t end up trying out. 

But it was fine, because Matt Laurence got the part, and Evan went to see the show and satiated his deep inner jealousy by telling himself that Matt did a better job than he ever could’ve done. 

When Matt continued to get every part from then on, that little knot of jealousy burrowed deeper and deeper until Evan almost forgot it was there. But it was there.

The next morning in homeroom, Connor has a book. 

Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee.

He’s sitting in the corner, crunched up in his chair, reading.

He doesn’t stand for the pledge. Ms. Fletcher, who has given up on monitoring the class, doesn’t seem to notice. 

The group is doing some sort of cup-stacking game, which Evan would rather die than be a part of. Instead, he makes his way over to Connor’s desk.

Evan stands there for at least a minute in silence. 

Connor either doesn’t notice Evan’s presence or doesn’t care. He just keeps reading. 

“Is that a good book?” Evan asks.

Connor’s eyes flicker upwards. “What?”

Evan regrets saying anything. Why couldn’t he have just let Connor read in peace? “Your- your book. Is it good?”

Connor looks back down. “Not really.”

“Oh. Then, um, why are you reading it?”

“Why not?”

The conversation is clearly over.

At lunch, Evan asks Jared if he’s read Go Set A Watchman. He says no.

In English, Alana says yes. She read Mockingbird freshman year like everyone did, she says. Then at a library booksale she bought Go Set A Watchman for fifty cents. 

“But did you like it?” Evan asks while the teacher isn’t looking.

Alana shrugs. “It was okay. I wasn’t a huge fan of the characterization.”

 

~

 

There’s a barbecue for seniors that night. Evan reluctantly goes, even if only for free food.

The field behind the school is lit in the warm orange glow of a bonfire, and large folding card tables hold mediocre food. Evan piles a plate high and sits beneath the ‘Tree of Life’, an inside thing among the students. Bad rap music is being played from somewhere, and a few clumps of people are dancing along. Evan watches them. 

He doesn’t even notice the person above him until the corn falls on his head.

He doesn’t even realize it’s corn at first. Logically, how often does a cob of corn fall from a tree onto one’s head? 

But it isn’t until Evan’s blindly groping around for the offending object that his hand grips a greasy, buttery cob of corn.

Which is by far the most disgusting feeling on earth. 

Evan recoils and from above him comes a voice, saying, “my bad.”

Evan looks up to see a pair of boots swinging from a tree branch above him. Then a face. 

“It was really slippery, okay? It just fell. I can’t be held responsible for my actions.”

It’s Connor.

In a school of thousands, he can’t avoid one person?

“Do you… want it back?” Evan’s hands are still buttery. Ew.

Connor laughs. “You can keep it.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

For a moment, it’s silent, exempting the din around them. 

“Wanna come up?”

Evan looks up once more. “What?”

“Wanna come up? I mean, I’m just on, like, the third branch. It wasn’t hard to get up here.” Connor shrugs. “It’s cool if you don’t want to, it’s just-”

“Nonono, I’ll come up. I… like climbing trees?”

Evan stands up, leaving his plate on the ground. It’s a bit of a struggle to get onto the first branch, given that Evan’s shorter than Connor, but after that it’s incredibly easy to find a spot on the branch that Connor’s perched on. 

Somebody wanders past strumming a guitar, and even after they move past the tree their chords can still be heard.

They sit in silence, listening to the music.

And isn’t it ironic, the two of them nestled in the Tree of Life?

Connor swings his feet in the air like a child, and Evan feels like he’s seen that before. 

“Why are you at the barbecue?” Evan asks. He feels bolder with the veil of night protecting him and the dwindling light from the bonfire casting an orange haze over the whole field. 

“I dunno.” Connor takes a bite of a hamburger and makes a face. “Ah, that’s so overcooked. I dunno. I know I’m not going to go to prom or anything, so I figured I might as well take part in one senior activity, you know?”

“Me too,” Evan says. “Uh, not going to prom, I mean.”

“Cool. Forever alone buddies.”

Evan couldn’t deny his smile. “Ye-yeah.”

The guitarist picks up pace and the fast, upbeat chord progression seeps into Evan’s ears and makes him believe that, for a second, everything is alright.

Above him, the sky is awash with stars. The leaves rustle indistinctly. Connor bops his head to the guitar. The chords are hypnotizing and Evan never wants to leave this moment.

“Have you ever seen a ghost?” Connor asks.

The comfort shatters. “W-what?”

“I dunno, it’s an icebreaker. So, have you? I never have, but I think it would be cool.”

Evan wants to lie so, so badly. Just say ‘no’ and move on. Although, technically, he never has, given that the Connors aren’t technically ghosts. “Yes,” his mouth says without his consent.

Connor’s face lights up. “Really? That’s so cool! Who do you think it was?”

“Uh…” 

Don’t cheat. Don’t lie.

“My grandpa.”

“That’s still pretty cool, though. How did he die?”

It’s a good thing that Evan’s lying, because if he really had seen the ghost of his grandpa, it would be a kind of dick move to ask how he died.

“Um…” Say something normal, like a heart attack. “Suicide?”

Connor’s face falls, and the childlike wonder is gone. “Oh.”

Evan laughs awkwardly. “Not so cool.”

Connor half smiles. “Not quite.”

There’s another stretch of silence. 

“Hey, what are you doing on Halloween?”

“Nothing,” Evan says, which is a lie.

God, he’s really bad at this.

“Zoe was thinking of inviting you over. Watch a movie, summon a demon or something.” Connor shrugs. “It would be cool if you came. Besides, my parents want to meet you.”

Right. Best and dearest friends.

That would mean Jared would be alone. But Jared probably has parties he could go to. And besides, he’s been spending Halloween with Jared for years. He can go one year with watching movies with someone else.

“Okay,” Evan says. “Sounds good.”

“Fair warning, Zoe’s been going through a weird phase where she’s obsessed with witches. I mean, I think it’s cool and all, but still. She’s probably going to make you do some sort of Wiccan ritual.”

Evan laughs. “That’s fine.”

The night ends in a downpour. 

There’s a hurricane coming in from the south, and they’re just starting to get the effects of it. Students rush home and hide in the lobby while they wait for rides, sopping wet and complaining. 

Connor gives Evan a ride home.

At his house, Evan hesitates before getting out of the car and having to dart through the rain to his door.

“I’ll text you about Halloween,” Connor says.

Evan gets soaked on the way inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! it is not thursday
> 
> i wrote this chapter quickly and i just wanted to get it out there
> 
> please comment please i know you're tired of me asking but it honestly makes my day


	10. i open the window and i gaze into the night, but there's nothing there to see, no one in sight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get a little bit spooky wooky.

The next morning in school, Connor has a new book.

Evan tries to peek at the cover from across the room. 

Connor’s hand is partially obscuring the cover, but he can see vaguely a picture of a man and a woman strolling through an autumnal forest and the words, “the Island.”

He doesn’t stand for the pledge. He’s lost in his own world, his head moving slightly to the music playing in his headphones and his eyes scanning the pages at supersonic speed.

Evan doesn’t ask about the book this time.

 

~

 

Evan is starting to get sick of rain.

The hurricane is slowly moving up the coast, and it’s been raining nonstop the whole week. Evan sort of wants the storm to just hit already.

It’s a dark and stormy night, Evan thinks. Like the beginning of that book. What book was it? A Wrinkle in Time, right?

That’s when the lights go out.

With a groan, Evan gets out of his desk chair to find the emergency kit. For as long as he can remember, Heidi has had a small box in the coat closet at the bottom of the stairs with flashlights, batteries, and candles in case of a power outage like this. The last time they had used it was years ago, and Evan’s sure it’s been untouched since then.

Blindly, Evan stumbles downstairs. The banister is sticky from the humidity.

The bathroom door at the end of the hallway is open, so Evan closes it.

He can see out the window that the whole block has lost power. There’s not a single light on in any house in sight. 

Evan opens the closet door and gets the box, grabbing a few flashlights. As an afterthought, he takes a portable charger, puts the box back, and goes back upstairs.

The rain has slowed down to a drizzle, and Evan takes this opportunity to open his window and breathe in the cool night air, revelling in the all-consuming darkness outside. 

The air smells like wet mulch and with the wind comes the scent of smoke. 

Evan imagines himself in a soft armchair in front of a blazing fire. There’s heat on his face and hot cocoa in his hands. 

Actually, hot cocoa would be really nice right now.

Evan gets up and slips on a sweatshirt. The floor is cold under his bare feet, and the wind from the open window certainly doesn’t help. 

The only light comes from the moon outside. The banister casts a long, spindly shadow, like the bars of a jail cell stretching across the hallway. Evan walks through the jail cell and into the kitchen. 

It’s odd that he doesn’t feel scared. 

He used to be afraid of the dark.

As a kid.

But not anymore.

Evan dumps the hot cocoa powder in the mug and stirs mechanically. He holds a small flashlight between his teeth as he stirs, and the dim light sends a beam of dusty yellow through the air, cutting through the darkness. 

Suddenly, the light flickers and dies. Evan smacks the flashlight. It doesn’t turn on.

He goes to the hall closet to get more batteries, but there are only empty plastic battery packs.

The bathroom door is open, so Evan closes it. 

He takes his hot cocoa up to his room and drinks it by his window, watching the clouds move across the sky. There’s not a single person out and the world is still. 

Then he hears a thump.

A shaking, rattling thump. 

Evan’s heart stops beating.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

It’s the wind, he tells himself.

But there’s that feeling in the pit of his stomach. 

The feeling that screams ‘ghosts.’

They’ve never been harmful, Evan tells himself. The ghosts have always been nice. And courteous. Why should I be scared?

He’s not scared.

At least, he doesn’t think so.

He keeps looking out the window and pointedly does not think about the noises.

Evan touches his neck. His heartbeat is racing like a drummer at an execution and his phone buzzes in his hand. 

He doesn't look. 

The noise gets louder. Evan can hear each book and trinket on that goddamn side table rattling with each kick. He remembers that night he went outside and the figure standing in his hallway.

So this is how Evan Hansen dies.

At least his window is open so that if he screams, someone will hear. But the world is empty and silent and dark and all Evan can do is quake with fear and breathe as shallowly as possible, with hope whoever is in his hallway doesn’t hear him.

His phone buzzes.

The noises stop and for a moment, Evan thinks the worst is over. 

Then a new noise replaces them.

Footsteps.

The side table is at the end of the hallway. At the rate the footsteps are going, Evan has maybe forty-five seconds before the murderer reaches him.

His stomach is churning and his mind knows that it is a ghost. An apparition.

A Connor.

Evan closes his eyes and prays to every god he can think of. But instead of the blankness of the back of his eyelids, he sees someone.

It’s the man from the grocery store, the one who dropped the note.

But… wrong.

So, so wrong.

There are those eyes again, blue and one-dimensional. The man is all skeletal limbs and disproportions. His skin is tinged with blue and his veins pulse against his paper skin. The man is dead and Evan killed him.

Evan opens his eyes.

Evan doesn’t want to look at that man for one more second.

Yet he fears he might have to.

He doesn’t hear the door open or the floorboards creak, but he knows that he’s no longer alone in his room.

Someone takes a shaky breath and Evan does not know who.

Evan’s stomach feels like regurgitated soup and his teeth are rotten in his head. He’s dizzy beyond belief and his heart is beating faster than it ever has before. He might pass out. 

Then, slowly, a voice that is not his own asks,

“Are you afraid?”

For the first time Evan moves. Yes, he nods.

Yes.

I am afraid.

The front door opens.

Evan knows the worst has passed.

“I’m home!” Comes the voice of his mother, and Evan has never been more grateful for her presence in his life.

Evan looks down at his phone. 

There are two texts from his mom; one says she’s on her way home and the other asks if he’s had dinner.

Evan hears the familiar footsteps of his mother climb the stairs. 

“Evan? Honey? Are you home?”

Evan nods. “Yeah,” he croaks out. “I’m in my room.”

Heidi comes in and Evan can feel warmth reenter the room.

Evan opens his eyes and realizes the lights are on.

“Did you have any issues with the power outage at work?” Evan asks, his breath rattling in his throat.

“What?” Heidi asks.

“There was a blackout,” Evan explains. “The whole block was dark.”

Heidi shakes her head ever so slightly. “Sweetie,” she says softly, “there was no blackout.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo i had this chapter finished on tuesday but i actually wanted to post on thursday for once lmao
> 
> again with that fanart thing... i'll love you forever


	11. there you go you're getting over, tap an old friend on the shoulder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's fall, and an event at school takes a turn for the worse (at least in Evan's mind)

Evan can’t sleep.

All he can hear as he lies in bed is that voice, that fucking voice.

“Are you afraid?”

Yes. 

Yes.

Yes.

Evan squeezes his eyes shut, trying to force his brain to shut down.

But his mind seems to be in overdrive. Every little thing is running laps around his head, and Evan is unable to stop.

So he sits up and turns on his bedside lamp, taking in the empty room. He sleepily grabs his phone and headphones. 

Might as well fill the void of silence.

The first song that comes up is the same song that Evan has been listening to since that day in the office, that day in Mr. Ache’s room. 

It’s a good song, that’s true. The three-part harmonies are gripping and the words are mournful but almost accepting of the inevitable.

The real question is why.

Why was this found in Connor’s pockets, so carefully folded?

Why did he cut the top off of the music, as if he was forcing one to search for the song themselves?

Maybe he was. Maybe it was one big “fuck you” to everyone.

Maybe it didn’t mean anything at all.

But as Evan falls into the music, he feels as though that can’t possible be true. 

 

~

 

There’s a certain void mundanity that accompanies American high schools. 

It’s a weird, dystopian soul-sucking place that doesn’t seem weird until you look at it from the outside.

Evan wakes up at 6:30 and starts walking at 7:20. He likes walking to school in the mornings, it wakes him up.

Every morning in homeroom everyone stands and mumbles the pledge as softly as possible and Connor sits in the corner with a book and his earbuds in.

Every day at lunch Evan gets an Uncrustable, carrots, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and a 1% milk carton and sits at Zoe’s table with the juniors. Evan doesn’t know where Jared sits anymore.

He hopes for third lunch because that means that after two long blocks and one short block you only have two short blocks left in the day, which makes the day seem shorter. But sometimes they run out of carrot sticks.

After school he gets a ride home with Jared and they stop at Dunkin’ Donuts. Jared drops Evan off at his house and Evan goes upstairs to struggle over his homework for three hours before giving up.

It’s mind-numbing, day in and day out. 

Every day is a pattern and although Evan would shoot himself in the face to get out of school, the predictability is comforting.

Which is why Evan never saw it coming.

In homeroom, everyone stands for the pledge but at “liberty and justice for all,” nobody sits.

They stand, silent and stoic, as the vice principal talks. As soon as the announcements are over, everyone gathers their backpacks and leaves.

Connor doesn’t seem to notice.

Evan’s frozen. What is going on? Is there a bomb in the school or something? Everything feels like it’s in slow motion as Evan watches in abject horror as the students take out phones and he watches their sneakers start their steady march out the door. 

He can’t move his feet, can’t breathe. 

Suddenly, his brain snaps into action and he can tell that he’s panicking. His heart is beating too fast and he can’t breathe. Evan’s throat feels tight and he can’t breathe, he can’t. 

His legs feel like jelly and for a moment, Evan thinks he’s going to collapse right in the middle of his (almost) empty homeroom. 

Then he feels hands on his shoulders and he’s upright.

“Woah,” Connor says from behind him. “Do you need to sit down?” 

Evan doesn’t move. His throat is still to tight to speak. With one hand he pulls at the skin of his neck and he doesn’t even realize he’s scratching hard enough to leave a mark until he hears Connor say, “stop that.”

“I’m going to take Evan to the nurse’s office,” Connor announces. With his hands still on his shoulders, Connor steers Evan towards the door. 

Evan can walk, but he’s taking shallow, gasping breaths of air and he feels like he’s going to die soon.

Nonetheless, he makes it to the nurse’s office. 

After four years, the nurse, Mrs. Kilkenny, knows Evan well. She brings him to the dark room off of the office with the beds for people with headaches or stomach bugs and gives him a glass of water. 

She knows he’ll calm down by himself soon enough.

And he does. It’s just the fear of not knowing.

He takes deep breaths through his mouth to try and open up his throat and listens to Connor and Mrs. Kilkenny talk on the opposite side of the door. 

“I think the walkout was what made him freak. I don’t think he knew.”

“I hadn’t thought it was a good idea in the first place,” Mrs. Kilkenny said in her thick Irish brogue. “Half the students just wanted to bunk off.”

The bell rings and the two fall silent.

“Well, you’d better get to your classes. Can’t imagine what you’ll be doing all alone.” 

“Might as well find out.” The door squeaks open and Evan can hear Connor’s shoes leaving. “Slán leat.”

 

~

 

It turns out the walkout was organized by the theatre kids in order to try and get the school to put more money into the auditorium. Most students went, either because they supported the cause or just wanted an excuse to skip school.

Evan knows that the varsity lacrosse team all stayed in because they wanted new uniforms and they didn’t want the money being wasted on the drama department. 

Most classes the teachers just let him read or work independently. Some classes have other students, either lacrosse players or cheerleaders or, like him, students who just didn’t know what was going on. 

In English, Evan’s teacher makes him and Connor discuss their reading of Oedipus the King.

“I’m just saying, Oedipus radiates Dumb Bitch Energy.” Connor says.

“He’s a king, and- and he solved the Sphinx’s riddle,” Evan mumbles into his notebook.

“It’s an easy riddle. Besides, after just learning that his fate in life is to kill his dad and marry his mom, he runs away and on that same day kills a bunch of people and marries a lady he’s never met? You seriously want me to believe this idiot didn’t step back and think, ‘hey, due to recent discoveries in my life, these choices might not be the best for me right now?’” Connor scoffs. “What a fucking moron.”

At lunch, Evan somehow sits alone in an empty cafeteria. It does give him ample opportunity to scope out the rest of the people in the cafeteria, however. The sports kids all sit together in the extension. A few freshmen sit at a table by the bathrooms, where the freshmen always sit. And in the senior section closest to the windows is Evan and Connor.

Evan sits by the exit door, where there’s a breeze and he can see the red maple outside the window. He loves that tree, especially in the fall when the leaves turn a brilliant auburn and the world seems alight with color. On one hand, fall means beautiful foliage and great holidays. On the other, it means his seasonal depression is right around the corner.

Connor comes through the lunch line with a tray piled high with food (how can someone so skinny eat so much food?), says “gracias” to Mrs. Rodriguez the lunch lady, and sits in the opposite corner by the teacher’s lounge. He pulls out his book and starts to read while shoveling his food in his mouth. Connor has Cinnamon Toast Crunch too, Evan notes. Except he eats it without milk. 

Just spoons dry cereal in his mouth. 

He chews with his mouth closed, though, which is something that can’t be said for a lot of people Evan knows. 

Evan has to walk home from school. Jared apparently did the walkout and both his and the “FUCK YOU ASSHOLE” car’s spaces are empty. 

So Evan walks.

It isn’t a hot day, per se, but his backpack makes his back sweaty and the sun is enough to soak anyone through. 

His house feels like a crypt.

And just like his stomach says, there’s Connor waiting for him on his bed.

“Hi, bitch,” he says.

“Go away,” Evan says.

Connor laughs and his canines are pointed and crooked. “Wow. Not even a hello?”

Evan can feel hot tears prick his eyes. “I-I-”

Connor blows a long raspberry. “Boo, you whore.”

“I have homework to do.”

"That's-" Connor winces and touches his head. “She’s sick. Tá sí tinn.”

“Wh-what?”

Those eyes are fixated on Evan. It feels like Evan’s stomach is crawling with worms.

“Gortaíodh í. Beidh am ag teastáil uaithi.” Connor winces again, almost as if he’s glitching. “What?”

“What?”

“What?” Connor looks confused, almost as if he has no idea what just happened.

“Do you speak… whatever that was?”

Connor frowns. “I don’t know. Do I take French?”

“I think so.”

“Huh.”

Evan sits heavily down at his desk chair and pulls out his math notebook. 

“Oh,” Connor says.

But when Evan turns back around, he’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow updating on a thursday? I'm proud of myself  
> so in my original notes chapter 11 was going to be a huge chapter (you'll see) and now i see it might be 13. who knows. buckle up kiddos.   
> oh wow is ootf begging you to comment? yes she is


	12. i've never felt this healthy before; i've never wanted something rational

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hallween.

After the walkout incident, Connor didn’t really interact with Evan. 

They had to proofread each other’s analytical paragraphs in English, but that could hardly be considered a social call.

So Evan keeps to himself. He sits awkwardly with Zoe at lunch and tries to understand the conversations of the band kids. He doesn’t know what an embouchure is and at this point he’s too afraid to ask.

But on October 31, Zoe sits down and turns directly to Evan.

“Connor said he invited you over.” 

Evan’s milk goes down the wrong pipe and he ends up coughing for a good minute before he can talk. “Uh- yeah,” he says, his face bright red.

“Cool. We’re watching Hocus Pocus.”

“Okay?”

Zoe shrugs. “Just didn’t know if he told you. He said he’d text you with the deets. Speaking of which, when did my brother get your phone number?”

“I, um, long story?” That’s so suspicious, oh my god.

“Huh.” Zoe dips a chicken tender into a puddle of mustard. “Am I the only one who’s like, not dissatisfied with the school mashed potatoes? Like, they’re definitely not mashed potatoes, but I’m not mad at it, you know?”

Someone snaps emphatically. “Tea.”

“Okay, but the roasted carrots are like actual crack,” one girl says. Evan’s pretty sure her name is Rachel. 

“Hell yeah,” Zoe says. 

She’s the paragon of teenage ease, with ripped jeans and a black tank top with a cool pattern of a sun and moon and the zodiac signs around it. She’s fully embraced the bit of Indian summer they’re getting, and her oversized flannel is tied around her waist. 

Evan’s just a bumbling, anxious dork but somehow he’s hanging out with these people, the ideal of American cool. 

How on earth did he get here?

 

~

 

At seven, Evan hears a long honk from outside his house. 

He hopes it’s not something mundane, because otherwise his sudden heart palpitations would be sort of embarrassing.

He pushes aside his window blinds and there in his driveway is a shiny red convertible with the Murphy siblings at the helm.

Evan’s heart jumps into his throat. Half of him was sort of expecting for them to stand him up. Like he was going to be the butt of a cruel joke. 

But here they are, in the leaf-covered driveway where Evan’s mom’s Kia Sorento usually sits. The car stands out like a sore thumb amid the leaf-littered lawn and shabby shrubs in desperate need of deadheading. Evan pulls on a sweatshirt (is that too casual?) and more or less flies downstairs. He pauses by the door before shaking out some candy into a bowl and placing it on his stoop with a sign telling the prospect trick-or-treaters to ‘help themselves’.

Not that any trick-or-treaters will come, of course. They never do. Evan’s street is busy and forks right into the highway, so cars come whipping down the road without looking for pedestrians. Most parents don’t let their kids trick-or-treat down his road and when people do come, it’s teenagers whose costumes are just them dressing in their cheerleading or football uniforms and lamely asking for candy at the door.

Zoe sits at the wheel, her hair windswept and her face bright in the autumn glow. She’s wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses and earrings shaped like ghosts and is tapping the steering wheel to the beat of some song playing over the radio.

Connor sits in the back with his legs tucked up against Zoe’s seat. He’s wearing black jeans that are ripped at the knee but they don’t looked factory ripped. More like he fell down too many times. Connor doesn’t have sunglasses, so he’s just squinting against the dwindling sun and scowling.

Evan pauses for a moment on the stoop, unsure of how to proceed. Then Zoe pounds on the horn again and yells, “c’mon! The night’s not getting any longer!”

So he climbs into the front seat and buckles the seatbelt carefully, making sure it won’t come unbuckled and then if they hit a pothole he won’t go launching over the window onto the street and it’ll be too late to stop so Zoe’s awesome car will probably run him over. He checks again.

Zoe pulls out of his driveway and off they go down the street, the wind mussing Evan’s hair and making his eyes water. The engine backfires and revs as they drive, and every time Zoe accelerates, the engine sounds like the car’s about to take flight. It’s nervewracking but exhilarating. 

Evan’s never really had the exhilarating part of that before. 

Zoe takes back streets, winding through idyllic suburban roads and past almost identical houses. Slowly, the houses get bigger and the lawns get manicured. The cars in the driveway get nicer.

On the radio, the oldie rock gets drowned out by electric guitar and, surprisingly, harmonica. A large smile splits across Zoe’s face.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Connor says.

Zoe cranks the music to the loudest caliber possible and starts to sing along.

“Jesus fuck,” Connor shouts over the radio. “Spare our dignity.”

“Bold of you to assume I had any in the first place,” she says.

Zoe’s nose scrunches when she sings, and her voice cracks when she gets too high. But the imperfection is what makes the music. “And all I really want is some patience!” She sings. You can hear the feeling seeping out of her voice, and part of Evan thinks she’s going to crack the windshield with the sheer power of it. “A way to calm the angry voice!”

Connor looks pissed at the world at this point, but he nevertheless mumbles along, “And all I really want is deliverance.”

Zoe’s singing gets more intense as she continues, and by the time she reaches “enough about me, let’s talk about you for a minute,” her voice is at full volume.

From the backseat Connor surprises everyone by parroting back, “enough about you, let’s talk about life for a while!”

It’s like a spell’s been broken. They’re all grooving to the music, even Evan, who’s satisfied himself with never dancing in front of anyone. 

Zoe bobs her neck like a chicken as she drives, and it reminds Evan of Connor in homeroom, his head moving almost unnoticeably to the music playing in his headphones.

It strikes Evan that he has no idea what Connor listens to. 

The song ends and everyone is left with a small emptiness in their ears before the next song starts. It doesn’t seem like Zoe knows this one, but she still moves her head to the beat and drums her fingers against the steering wheel. 

It’s like Zoe’s entwined with the music. It’s part of her. 

And in a way, it is with Connor. 

Could Evan imagine the ghosts without the constant background of music? Homegrown, incomprehensible music. 

Not long after, Zoe parks. The Murphys have a circular driveway. There’s no leaves on the driveway or the lawn.

The house is utterly unoutstanding amongst the other high-income houses lining the streets. Attractive blue siding, large windows, that pointed roof thing in front. Two dormer windows with little signs of life. A two car garage and a stone walkway from the driveway to the porch. The halloween decorations are tasteful and not overbearing, and there’s no basketball hoop in the driveway or political lawn signs. It looks like it’s been plucked out of a real estate magazine.

The door is red and Connor and Zoe barge right in.

Well, it is their house. They have a right.

Should Evan take off his shoes? Neither of the siblings do, but maybe it’s different for guests?

The foyer is painted cream and splits into a hallway with a stairway leading up and open arches to the rest of the bottom floor. There’s a cream side table with a mirror over it and a vase of what looks like wheat.

If there’s one word to describe the Murphys’ house, it’s tasteful. 

Connor stubs his toe on the cream side table. “Fuck,” he says untastefully.

Zoe looks like she fits in this house. She looks like the kind of girl to drive an old car and live in a house like this. 

Connor, however… he sticks out. His dark clothing attacks the porcelain and chiffon of the house, much like how his dark hair curls are beset around his cheeks paled the color of ivory, with dark purple bags under his eyes and faint brown freckles scattered like stars across his nose. With acne scars on his chin and forehead the color of turned jam and that slice of brown in his blue Murphy eyes, he’s built like an art project. An art class on color.

When had Evan become so familiar with the terrain of Connor’s face?

“We’re back, mom!” Zoe calls into the expanse around the house.

From a room off of the hallway comes a short laugh. “I heard the swearing and assumed.”

Zoe leads the group into what appears to be a living room. It’s picturesque and simple like the rest of the house, with a whitewashed brick fireplace in the center and large windows looking out onto the impeccable backyard. Mrs. Murphy is nestled in a mustard yellow armchair with a book and a glass of water. She seems cozy, but some things seem off, like the bandage on her neck and the scrapes on her face. 

“Connor, sweetie, can you get my pills for me? They’re on the counter.” Mrs. Murphy smiles like the perfect hostess. “You must be Evan.”

Connor brushes by Evan. “I only need one!” Mrs. Murphy calls after his retreating back.

Evan feels sweaty. Is it hot in this room? “Oh. Uh- yes. Hello, Mrs. Murphy. Nice to meet you?” 

Luckily, Connor returns with a single white pill in his palm and hands it to his mother, who takes it with a sip of water and smiles. “Thank you. Speaking of which, I made those cookies you love so much. Figured I’d treat you and your guest.”

Connor speaks, in a much softer voice than he’s ever heard. “Mom, you’re not supposed to be up.” There’s an edge to his words, though, and Evan can’t identify it.

“I know, but I can’t stay cooped up forever, can I?” She laughs. “Besides, the doctors told me I could walk around.”

“Yeah, to pee,” Zoe says with a snort. “Not to bake cookies. C’mon, Evan.”

Evan dutifully follows, and he can feel Mrs. Murphy’s eyes on his back. He feels naked and watched, and although there’s something definitively sweet about the woman, he feels like he’s a sweater being unraveled by a single string. 

“Cookies are on the counter,” Mrs. Murphy says after them.

If the Murphys’ house is tasteful, Zoe’s room is tacky.

Her walls are an icky purple, like they were picked out by a seven-year-old, which is possible. Her bed is strewn with clothes over the yellow plaid duvet, and come to think of it, so is the rest of the room. Her walls are covered in posters and pictures and weird hanging things. There’s a shelf above the bed crammed with stuffed animals and the one clean corner in the room is the little alcove next to the closet, where three guitars hang on the wall. Compared to the rest of the room, the guitars positively gleam.

But the crowning jewel of the room is the TV. A large flatscreen mounted on the wall opposite her bed. 

When Evan was a kid, he wanted a TV in his room.

Zoe picks up the clothes from her bed in one big heap and dumps them all in a pile next to her desk. She catapults herself onto the bed, making the duvet bounce up with her. Connor follows and then it’s Evan standing in the midst of this teenage warzone, trying not to touch anything. 

“Sit down, dude.” Zoe says. “We don’t bite. Well, Connor did when he was younger.”

Connor frowns. “Wow. Fuck you.”

But there’s nothing thrown and no ghosts appear and they watch the movie uneventfully, and Evan can feel the whir of anxiety in his gut ebb.

At one point, Mrs. Murphy appears at their door with a plate of cookies. Zoe gets up and takes them, looking disappointed. “You shouldn’t be up, mom.”

“They were going to get cold.” You can hear the hurt in her voice at the rejection. But she closes the door and goes back downstairs and Zoe solemnly nibbles at a cookie.

“What, um, what happened to her?”

Connor groans. “She got into a car incident, like, week and a half ago. She wasn’t hurt or anything, but it sort of messed up her back. Of course she’s making fucking cookies. That woman doesn’t know when to stop.”

“Stop being a dick,” Zoe says. “She made your favorite fucking cookies. She didn’t have to make gluten, egg, peanut, and baking soda free cookies, but she did. Because you’re fucking allergic. So how about you stop being an ungrateful little bitch?”

Connor scowls. “Fuck you,” he says, and there’s venom in his words.

The room is quiet after that.

Zoe drives Evan home and doesn’t play the radio. She hooks her phone up and plays weird acoustic stuff with nice harmonies, and somehow, it sounds familiar. The voices. They’re as recognizable as if his own mother was singing.

When he gets home, he falls instantly asleep. He doesn’t check his email or takes a shower, just gets into his pajamas and climbs right into bed. 

Because for once he feels happy.

Even though the Murphys house is too perfect and he can feel the tension that hangs in the air there, lingering like a perfume as soon as he steps over the threshold. Even though Connor and Zoe sort of get along but still rub each other the wrong way, like two magnets that try to come together but repel each other just by way of nature. Even though Mrs. Murphy is weak and injured and makes cookies for her children like Evan’s mom never has.

He lies on his bed and he can’t stop the smile that stretches across his face, because he’s content. 

Next to him, his phone buzzes.

Connor:  
Happy spooky day

Evan grins and puts his phone back. When he snuggles under the covers, he can hear the voices in his head being drowned by the voices of the Murphy siblings, singing raucously and spitting words without a second thought.

And when he closes his eyes, all he can see is Connor’s face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi hi how was everyone's mean girls day? good good
> 
> i'm hyped for halloween you guys
> 
> okay so it looks like chapter 13 won't be the big chapter either, this is getting much longer than i expected but you know, more fun for everyone
> 
> listen to the wailin' jennys please


	13. you're caught by surprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evan is an avoiding people champ!

Evan’s never seen so many hungover kids in his classes as he does November 1st.

It seems everybody went out to terrible house parties and got absolutely obliterated on crappy beer. 

Then the next day they shuffled into school like zombies and now they sit in English class, half asleep, half listening as Connor reads a passage from Oedipus out loud.

He’s reading the chorus part, and it’s a long monologue about how Jocasta died.

And it seems so painful to hear Connor drone about Jocasta’s suicide and Oedipus gouging his eyes out when he’s only just come back from the hospital, if you think about it.

Evan’s eyes hurt because his overactive imagination can’t stop thinking about what it would feel like to stab your own eyes with a brooch. 

He really likes the play, and his teacher’s analysis is good, it’s just not great for his brain.

Connor’s a good reader. Even as he reads emotionlessly with the heaviness of a tired high schooler, he has an investment in the words. They carry meaning as they slip off his tongue. 

Connor doesn’t breathe until he gets to the end of a sentence, Evan notices. He just keeps going until he gets to a period then takes a deep breath, like he’s steeling himself for the sentence to come.

If this was a book, that would be a perfect metaphor.

But unfortunately it’s life, and sometimes people just do things for no symbolic reason other than doing them.

And so for no symbolic reason, Connor comes up to Evan after class as if to initiate a conversation, and Evan turns away.

He can feel Connor’s eyes on him as he packs up his bag but he doesn’t look up, just shoves his papers in his folder and shoulders his backpack with shame.

It’s not like he doesn’t want to talk to Connor, he just… doesn’t have the energy. 

Because if he tries to talk then he’s going to end up stuttering or saying something stupid or calling Connor “Conrad” and he really doesn’t want to do that, not now.

So he hurries out of the room without making eye contact with anyone and mumbles a quick ‘thank you’ to the teacher. 

The halls are packed and Evan winds his way through the throng with his head down and eyes averted so as not to have to make contact with anyone.

He does this the whole day because he’s not doing very well right now. Dr. Sherman would be disappointed that he’s fallen back into old habits. At lunch he goes to the courtyard and climbs a big bare tree with a few leaves left, although the stragglers mostly fall as he moves the branches. He finds the perfect perch to sit and rest and not eat, because if he tries to eat anything right now he’ll definitely throw up and of all the places to throw up, a tree is probably the worst. 

Then he almost has a mini heart attack because Connor leaves the cafeteria and walks straight towards Evan’s tree, except he stops when he gets to the bottom, turns, and walks a few steps away. He stands there, scratching at his neck, where the bottom of his neck meets his collarbones. 

Evan doesn’t know if he should say something. There’s a possibility Connor didn’t see him. Connor’s head is always tilted downwards.

So he holds his breath and tries not to move.

But trying not to move makes him spasm and the branch creaks under his weight and Connor turns around, his eyes wild, as if expecting to be ambushed. He looks up.

“Oh,” he says. “Hey.”

Evan lets out his breath. “Uh… hi?”

“I, um.” 

“Y- yeah.”

It’s painfully awkward. It almost feels like Evan’s having a conversation with a clone, that’s how badly it’s going.

Connor’s moved onto scratching his scalp.

“Don’t drop corn on my head,” Connor says dryly.

It’s technically funny, but Evan doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t have the energy. 

Connor frowns. “I’ve, uh, going back inside.”

“It’s cold,” Evan responds.

Connor turns and walks away.

“Bye, Jared,” Evan mumbles by accident. He doesn’t know if Connor heard. He hopes not.

When he drives home the car is deathly quiet. Jared clearly wants to say something, and Evan wants to answer, but the air just hangs low with tension.

Evan imagines a parallel world where Connor’s driving him home. He’s in the passenger seat of a fashionable red sports car. Connor put his hair up and on the way home they don’t stop for Dunkin’ Donuts, they go to Wendy’s instead. Connor gets a chocolate frosty and dips fries in it like Evan does. 

“Whatcha smiling at?”

Evan blinks. “Huh?”

Jared doesn’t take his eyes off the road. “You’re smiling out the window. It’s creepy.”

“I, uh-“

“Cool. Good talk.”

Jared drops Evan off at his house but Evan’s dreamland doesn’t shatter; in fact, it grows stronger. He eats his dinner alone at the kitchen table and conjures up an image of Connor sitting across from him. Of course, Evan doesn’t know how Connor eats, so the imaginary Connor just sort of sits there. But it’s comforting nonetheless.

Evan never could think the presence of a fake Connor could bring so much comfort. He’s used to being haunted, not kept company during dinner. So Evan keeps the imaginary Connor around. 

Even in school, Evan can picture Connor folded into the desk next to him, tapping his pencil to the rhythm of the kid behind him’s pencil. 

And this is how he effectively ignores Connor Murphy.

Because even when the real Connor’s actually in his class, his imaginary friend is so present and there that it doesn’t even seem to matter. 

Jared keeps asking Evan if he’s okay, because he has this creepy faraway look in his eyes and it’s not the usual disassociation look, it’s dreamier. Even unobservant Jared can see that something’s off in the upper story. 

During English real Connor keeps glancing towards Evan with this weird look on his face. But Evan’s lost in thought.

He doesn’t even notice when he finds the note mysteriously in his back pocket.

He just puts it back on his desk and moves on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yo sorry i missed last week, i've been super busy and stressed yikes  
> please comment and help me stay motivated about this


	14. with none to be your comfort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Pokedex (Ghostie-dex?) is complete.

Evan knows he’s coasting on borrowed time.

He’s been avoiding everyone: Jared, Connor, even his mom.

So eventually he knew he would have to explain himself.

It ends up being Jared who confronts him first, in the car. The one place where he can’t escape.

“Hey, what did you do on Halloween?” Jared asks calmly as he they wait at a traffic light. “You didn’t show up at my house.”

“Oh. I, um, I was busy?”

“You’ve always been a shit liar, Evan. Who were you with?”

Evan’s voice came out as a nervous squeak. “Connor Murphy?”

Jared let out a harsh laugh. “Connor fucking Murphy? What did you do, sacrifice a virgin together? Holy shit, do you think he’s a virgin?”

Evan almost gets whiplash from Jared’s comment, but he can tell Jared’s hurt by being brushed off. “I’m sorry. I meant to tell you before, but I…”

“You got to busy with your fuckbuddy that you couldn’t send a text? That’s fine. Happens to the best of us.” Jared’s jaw is clenched as he turns onto Evan’s street.

“I-I’m sorry?” 

“Forget about it.” Jared pulls into Evan’s driveway and motions towards his house. “It’s your stop.”

Evan’s almost glad to leave the hostile atmosphere of the car. “Sorry.”

The house is empty and cold and smells of old soap, and Evan would give anything to live in the kind of house where you come home to lights on and the smell of something baking. 

That’s probably what the Murphy’s house smells like, he thinks.

Unfortunately, across town in the Murphy house, the whole second floor is alight with screaming, as Zoe plugged in her guitar and Connor aggressively asked her to ‘turn it the fuck down’. 

But Evan doesn’t know that.

He does his homework in silence and tries not to think about how grateful he is that no ghosts have visited him recently, because if he thinks that he’ll jinx himself, so he just thinks over and over ‘a ghost is going to come any second now’ but that sends his stomach into a flurry of anxious nerves. So he doesn't get a lot done.

He has long block math that day, and he didn’t really understand the concept the night before while doing homework, so he sits in silence in the back of class and doesn’t ask the questions he really needs to.

It’s a slow, monotone day.

In homeroom Connor doesn’t have a book, but he doesn’t look at anyone either. In fact, it seems as if he’s almost pointedly not looking at Evan. 

This continues the whole day. Evan’s never really noticed how often Connor looks at him until he suddenly stops. 

He’s gotten so used to Connor’s eyes on him during English, as he stutters over Sophocles or asks if the teacher thinks the messenger character could possibly be a form of Apollo. It’s unnerving. 

Jared has robotics club after school, so Evan waits in one of the practice rooms until he can get a ride. The practice rooms are just slightly soundproof, and he can hear a trumpet honking away in the room next to him. 

Through the thin window in the door Evan sees a Connor-shaped figure pass by, stopping right outside his door.

Evan holds perfectly still, almost as if that’ll somehow convince Connor that he’s not there, even though they’re making eye contact through the window and Connor’s hand is moving towards the handle, which slowly turns. 

The door creaks open and there’s Connor.

“Good. You’re alone.”

Evan’s breath catches because isn’t that a super creepy thing to say to someone, especially after not talking for a week?

“We need to…” Connor pauses. He looks pained. “Was I- did Jared put you up to it?”

“Up- up to what?” 

“I mean, obviously it was, you know, a joke or something, right? But you don’t seem like the kind of person to pull that shit.”

Evan’s beyond confused now. Connor doesn’t seem high. If anything, he seems overly sober. He’s fidgeting, but not in his usual absentminded way. “I-I don’t know?”

Connor sits down on the piano bench with a huff. “Halloween. And all that shit.” He looks mad, but also… sad? “Were you pretending?”

“Pretending what?”

“To- to be my friend. Or something.” Connor scratches at his neck, and Evan can see white lines forming on the skin. “It. It was a joke, right?”

“I, um, what?”

“I mean obviously it was a prank or something so just tell me and we can never talk again okay?” Connor blurts, the words tumbling from his mouth in a very Evan-like fashion. “Because clearly that’s what you want.”

“I-I, um, I did-didn’t know we were friends?” Evan wishes he could just sink into the faded and chipped practice room walls. 

“You really had me fooled,” Connor says in a low voice. His hair is obscuring his face, and he lets out a short, pained laugh. “I can’t believe it. Shit. It’s not like you cared about me.”

“I-”

Connor stands up and starts pacing. “It’s not like you cared. You never did, no one ever did. I just fucking texted you out of the blue and you felt- felt obligated to respond or something.” 

Connor’s spiraling deeper, and Evan has enough experience in that department to want to try and stop him, but he doesn’t know how. “Connor-”

“Shut the fuck up!” Connor yells, flinging his head up to meet Evan’s eyes. He looks frenzied and frantic and angry, and Evan is begging for something from the walls to come and take him away. The trumpet from next door stops playing with one last surprised honk. 

Evan can feel hot tears welling up in his eyes. “Connor, please…”

“It’s not fucking funny!” He yells. “I hope you’re fucking happy!” And with that he takes a cup of pencils from the top of the piano and throws it down onto the ground, sending pencils clattering all over the floor. 

Evan can’t stop the involuntary tear that slips down his cheek, and somehow that makes Connor even angrier. 

For a split second it looks like he’s going to apologize, and Evan can see the guilt and hurt in his eyes and all he wants is for Connor to say ‘sorry’, and everything will be alright. The apology dies like a snuffed candle. For the second time Connor’s very alive hands connect with Evan’s shoulders and send him flying back, where he slams into the wall and crumples to the ground with zero resistance.

“Fuck you!” And he’s gone, leaving the door rattling in its hinges.

 

~

 

Evan’s on edge. 

He has been ever since he came home. There’s that feeling in his gut, the one that means ghosts.

He’s trying to do his history homework about the industrial revolution, but he can’t focus. He’s worried himself into paranoia, like any moment something’s going to jump out of the shadows and get him. 

He really needs to pee, but he doesn’t want to get up because if he leaves his room, then that’s when whatever it is will strike. 

So Evan just tries to research James Hargreaves with all of his brainpower but he can’t, because his stomach is twisted and crumpled like an old CVS receipt. He’s antsy, and his chair squeaks whenever he squirms. He would put in headphones to block out the noise, but that would block out all noise, including the possible sounds of an intruder coming to pull his guts out through his mouth or whatever. 

Evan’s mind is torturing itself and its almost a relief when he hears the voice.

“You’re really bad at this, aren’t you?”

Evan whirls around in his squeaky chair, but the voice is coming from the hall.

“I’ve set up the perfect crime and you- you are fucking it all up.”

Evan’s own voice came out as a pathetic whimper. “Wh-who a-are you?”

“Even the note and all. Jesus fucking christ. I really chose the wrong person.”

“What? Wh-what are you t-talking about?” Even Evan is surprised by his own boldness. He doesn’t even think about the words coming out of his mouth, they just spill out.

The person rounds the corner and stands in the doorway of Evan’s bedroom. “Because you are the stupidest person in the whole fucking world.”

“C-Connor?”

It’s Connor, at least partly. 

It’s the man from the grocery store, the dead man.

It’s a twisted figment of an idea of Connor, like a badly reproduced painting.

From afar, it looks like a full scene, but up close, everything is wrong, just slightly.

“Basically.” Connor frowns, and his mouth is like putty. “Do your job.”

“Wh-what’s my job?”

“Jesus fucking christ. The note, homeroom, the fucking corn at the bonfire.” Connor begins to pace around the room, and somehow he seems to flicker in an out of existence. Evan squints to keep him in focus. “I have rearranged this timeline and you have gone and fucked it all up. And now I-“ Connor holds up a hand, a hand that seems to glitch and twist until Evan’s not really sure what he’s looking at anymore- “have to deal with the consequences.”

Everything about Connor is psychedelic and confusing. In a moment Evan can see every universe, every instance, every possible way that Connor could have- or still might- kick the bucket. 

“I never had consequences when I was alive.”

Evan finds his voice. “So you’re a ghost?”

“Y-no. I’m more of…” Connor picks up a pencil from Evan’s desk and wiggles it in front of his face to make it look bendy. “An apparition?”

Evan can only sit in agape silence.

Connor drops the pencil, and it clatters to the ground and makes Evan jump. He picks up a piece of paper from the desk that wasn’t there before. He sticks it in front of Evan’s face and he takes it, in the same way someone takes a court summons or a notice of a loved one’s death. 

It’s the note. Evan knows the note by heart. 

“I’ve given you the instructions,” he says. “Follow them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's thursday  
> i haven't been posting bc it was tech week for the musical and such but it's over now, i'm sad and melancholy and crying over 80's music (listen to the wedding singer)  
> ya.  
> comment and all that good shit


	15. i hear the sirens calling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evan can't stop thinking.

Evan doesn’t sleep very well. 

He can’t get the image of Connor out of his head.

Not the real Connor, that… thing.

He stays up all night, trying to distract himself by reading or doing homework or watching stupid Youtube videos. 

He knows he needs to mend his fences, but how?

Jared is easy. Jared is uncomplicated and thick-skinned and simple to please. 

All he needs to do is text him a few times, but generally just leave Jared to stew then move on.

But Connor is different.

Because, honestly, Evan has no idea why Connor’s mad at him. 

It’s hard to fix a bridge when you didn’t even know that the bridge was breaking until it collapses under you. 

So Evan’s going to have to do what he hates most in the world. Play it by ear.

Jared picks him up for school in the morning and everything seems almost normal. But the car’s too quiet. There’s no radio and there’s no gentle hum of the heater. 

“Um… what did you do last night?” Evan tries, his voice sounding strange and foreign in the void silence of the car. 

“Oh, you know. The usual.” Jared’s words are cold but not unfriendly. “Read lesbian porn fanfiction about Heathers.”

Evan looks at Jared incredulously, but there’s no sign of a joke in his face. “Like… um, the movie?”

Jared shrugs. “What did you do?”

“Um. Not much.” 

“Did you hang out with Connor?” 

Evan slumps down in his seat. “He- he’s mad at me.”

“That’s why you don’t hang out with psychos, dude.”

“He’s not a psycho,” Evan mumbles.

“Yeah, sure.”

It’s a rainy, dreary day, where the fallen leaves on the sidewalk are sodden and trampled and the sky is the muddy gray color of a river rock. 

There’s something calming about driving in the rain, something lulling in the sound of the hum of the engine and the rain on the windshield. 

There’s something mournful about the whole thing.

Evan’s in a weird funk the whole day, and he doesn’t pay attention to much. 

Choir’s kind of fun, but the thing is, Connor has a solo.

The choir is split into three groups: a group for freshman girls, a general group of everyone else, and a group of auditioned singers. Connor’s in the audition group. Evan doesn’t know this until he and the rest of the auditioned chorus come strutting into class, ready to take up their parts and sing as a full chorus. 

Evan didn’t even know there was a solo in the song.

It’s a weird French song from a French movie that all the kids who took French in eighth grade know, but Evan takes Spanish, so he’s out of luck. 

They start singing like normal, and it’s weird to have the other chorus with them, but it’s nothing earthshaking. Connor looks brain-dead the entire first half of the song, sitting in the corner. The choir goes silent for a moment as the director gestures to the tenors. 

Then Connor starts to sing.

His solo is truly beautiful, and he has a stunningly high voice. 

But Evan’s not as surprised as he would’ve been, because in a way, he’s already heard Connor sing.

The fake Connors sing all the time.

Just… never like that.

Never with such training and precision. Just like their very beings, the fake Connors sing with wanton abandon, flinging notes into the air like a kid throwing handfuls of leaves from a leaf pile. 

And it hurts so fucking much because Evan wants to just appreciate how beautiful Connor’s voice is, but all he can see is that twisted figment of Connor, that hideous caricature. Every time Connor opens his mouth all Evan can see is a mutated, gaping maw, twisted and black. Evan has to close his eyes. 

After class, Evan really, really wishes Connor wasn’t angry at him because he really wants to congratulate him, or say hi, or even just acknowledge him. 

It’s possibly for the best, though. Connor doesn’t really look like he wants to be acknowledged. 

When he gets home, Evan actually does his homework. He tries to distract himself the best he can, and it works, because his physics homework, which usually takes two hours, takes him twenty minutes. He listens to instrumental music and measures the evening by the length of the videos. 

He plays the jumping t-rex game for what seems like hours.

Everything he does seems like mindless activity to pass the time. 

His mother calls from work, something new she’s started doing when she can’t make it home.

Evan’s relieved for a break from his homework when she calls. 

Her voice immediately takes over the phone in its peppiness, and it makes Evan’s head hurt.

“Hi, honey!” She says, with the voice of someone who hasn’t been on shift at the ER for seven hours. “I’m on break right now, so I have a few minutes. How’s it going?”

“Uh… fine,” Evan says.

“Just fine?” She sound disappointed, but it’s not like Evan’s ever answered with anything other than ‘fine’. “How’s the homework? Do you have a lot?

“I have to watch a movie for history? It’s called, um, White King Red Rubber Black Death. In all caps.”

“Sounds interesting! What’s it about?”

“Um, it’s not that interesting. It's about, uh, imperialism in Africa?”

“Well, that sounds much more exciting than what I have to do,” Heidi says, ignoring Evan’s comment about how uninteresting the movie is. “The only sort of cool thing to happen today was a little kid with a lego stuck up his nose. But that’s pretty much dime a dozen, so not the most exciting event. Have you eaten dinner yet?”

Evan looks at the clock. It’s eight. “Uh… I’m about to.”

“Go do that sooner rather than later, please. I don’t want you to forget. I might live off coffee, but that doesn’t mean that you can!”

“Yeah.” Evan glances back at his computer screen, where the movie is paused on a rather unflattering facial expression made by King Leopold II. “I’ll go do that now.”

“There’s leftover lasagna in the fridge,” Heidi says. “You can have some of that.”

“Okay,” Evan says.

“Don’t microwave it for too long or the cheese will get all weird.”

“Okay,” Evan says. 

“I love you, sweetie.”

“Love you too.”

Evan ends up overcooking the lasagna and it does come out weird and chewy, but Evan doesn’t really care. He doesn’t expect much from premade Stop and Shop lasagna. 

He thinks about the Murphys.

He always seems to be thinking about the Murphys.

Mrs. Murphy seems like the kind of woman to make homemade lasagna. She’d make a lot and freeze the leftovers so they could keep having it all year. Evan thinks that’s sort of gross, but it does seem efficient. 

Or maybe they have steak every night. Are they vegetarian? They might be vegetarian.

Evan realizes that he doesn’t actually know a lot about the Murphys. 

It’s all fabrication and assumption. He knows very little about the actual lives of Connor and Zoe. Just the faces they put out to the world.

And he realizes that when Connor pushed him in the practice room, that was his hidden face.

That was the Real Connor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi hi hi it's not thursday but whatever  
> i had to write an english paper about shrek  
> please comment and be nice


	16. you fuck the world up now, we'll fuck it all back down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We finally get to read chapter 11

For a week, Evan moves in a cautious peace. There are no ghosts, no tests, no big incidents. 

In English, Connor has started staring again.

It’s almost comforting.

He’s decided that he likes Connor’s eyes trained on him. He doesn’t feel exposed or too seen, he just feels… noticed.

Evan really wants to be innocently noticed. 

But it’s not innocent, Evan realizes one class. There’s something behind Connor’s eyes that he can’t place.

It’s not malicious and it’s not suspicious. Evan’s gone through the entire dictionary trying to figure it out, but there’s nothing.

He’s so intrigued. He’s so intrigued in Connor. And it hurts, so much. Because Evan has thrown himself into Connor, flung himself into the well with no way of getting out. And he has no answers and all the questions and he wants to know.

They’re doing a mini poetry unit and everyone has to write a short poem to read for the class.

Evan’s is pretty shitty. There are some good ones in class, but most are also kind of bad. They’re either too incomprehensible or too on-the-nose or they’re just poorly written. One girl wrote a twenty-line (ten lines over the limit) ballad about a lily, and it was obvious she had never seen a lily in her life. 

On the second day of the readings, Connor’s name is called. 

His hands are shaking as he holds his paper. Evan never thought his hands could shake but he’s standing at the front of the class, his hair shining from the backlight of the smartboard behind him, and his knees are twitching and he keeps jerking his head to the right.

He coughs twice and starts to read.

“I would leave fond farewells to friends, if that’s what they happened to be.”

Evan’s blood runs cold. 

“And all the harm that e’er I’ve done, alas, it was to none but me.”

His heart either stops beating or starts beating too fast to notice, but either way, it’s not good.

“I leave behind this broken life and give to you my lone goodbye.”

It can’t be. How can Connor know about the note? Does he know about the ghosts? Fuck, does he know everything?

“Don’t be a liar, know your desire, thus with a kiss I die.”

Evan finds himself mouthing the words along with Connor. He’s read them so many times they seem like part of him. The mediocre applause of the other kids in class sounds like a muffled ocean wave in Evan’s ears. He can’t clap, only sit there in agonizing confusion. 

His hand shoots up on its own accord. The teacher nods in his direction. “Yes, Evan? Do you have a comment?”

“CanIgotothebathroom?”

There are titters from around the class, but it’s clear no one really cares. The teacher nods. Evan stands up and his chair screeches against the floor. 

He runs to the bathroom, screw the rules.

The lights flicker on as he runs in and tries to find a stall. The first toilet is covered in what looks like plastic wrap, and someone has peed over the plastic. Evan gags and locks himself in the next one over. The floor is weirdly wet so Evan just stands there and hyperventilates.

He remembers freshman year, when he had a panic attack about his math final that was so bad he had to go to the nurse, where he threw up twice. Then, when he went back after school to work out a day to retake, he had to run to the bathroom to throw up again. He was wearing shorts and he had to kneel on the bathroom tile.

Evan feels sort of nauseous just thinking about it. 

He just stands there, hugging his arms, trying to sort out his own thoughts.

So Connor knows the note. How, he doesn’t know. Does that mean he knows about the ghosts? Does that mean he’s the cause of the haunting?

Does he know what Evan’s supposed to be doing?

He finally calms down and splashes his face with sink water before heading back to his classroom, trying to make it seem like he didn’t just have a panic attack in the bathroom and was just taking a really long pee like a normal person. When he sits back down, Connor doesn’t seem any different. He can feel Connor watching him from across the room, but it hasn’t changed. Evan steals a glance, and they accidentally make eye contact. Connor seems normal and innocent and looks like he hasn’t thought about ghosts since Halloween. 

After class, when everyone’s packing up their bags, Evan makes a move to talk to Connor for the first time in weeks. 

Connor doesn’t seem to notice his presence until he speaks.

“Where did you get that poem?” It comes out more accusatory than he means for it to be, and Connor seems rattled by the question.

“Um… I wrote it?” Connor pauses. “Did you understand the assignment?”

“Oh… yeah.” How can Evan cover that up? He’s just going to seem like an idiot. “Sorry. I, uh, I just thought I recognized it.”

Connor side-eyes Evan like he’s grown a second head and continues to pack up. “O-kay.”

“I’msorry!” Evan blurts.

Connor shoulders his backpack. “Don’t apologize.”

He brushes by Evan, and any hope Evan had of an apology and a makeup is dead in his throat as Connor disappears into the hallway.

 

~

 

Evan’s homework is killing him, and he wishes that his mom was a mathematician instead of a nurse. Then maybe she could help him.

But Evan labors over his calculus alone, content in his illusion of safety.

It isn’t until he turns around to get his textbook that he sees him.

It’s Connor, ghost Connor, standing at the foot of his bed like something out of a horror story. All blurred edges and concealing shadows.

“You need to work faster,” he says.  
Evan can see the scabbed and bloodied scars on his inner arms from where Connor’s sweatshirt sleeves go transparent.

He realizes what this is, and it hurts his Jewish heart.

It’s fucking A Christmas Carol. 

And this Connor, spooky ghost Connor, is the future. This is Connor’s future- he’s doomed to be a gory ghost, haunting some poor anxious high schooler.

Evan feels a surge of courage. “Why are you here?”

“To help you,” Future Connor answers. “I’m here to help.”

Future Connor slinks over to Evan’s desk, and he embodies the teenage ghost Connor’s ease and fluid movements, but it’s like watching a snake move on a glitching screen. Evan swallows his courage back down. “I’m here… to ease you into working faster.” He talks slowly and surely, and something about him reminds Evan of Scar from the Lion King. 

“I-I need to work faster for-for what?” Evan stammers. It’s all he can do.

“You’re not doing anything right. Granted, I’m not making it easy on you…” Future Connor zones out for a second. “Whatever. Just… do better.”

Evan tries to go back to his math homework. Maybe if he ignores Future Connor, he’ll just go away. He gets halfway through one problem before the ghost breaks the silence with a sharp, “bitch.”

Evan whirls around with what is supposed to look like an intimidating look on his face. “C-can I do my homework?”

“Jesus fucking christ. Do I have to spell this out for you?” Future Connor says, walking closer to Evan. He has to bend down to be eye level with Evan, and he does so terrifyingly. 

Future Connor reaches a hand up, and for a moment, Evan thinks he’s going to slap him, or strangle him, or something equally bad. Instead, he opens Evan’s desk drawer and pulls out that goddamn piece of paper.

“You. Are not. Doing your job.”

Evan can barely breathe at this point. His eyes keep bouncing back and forth from the paper, to Future Connor, to the paper. “I-I don’t- what?”

“I didn’t expect you to be such an idiot about this. This note is very clear. Okay? Do what it says. I don’t have time for this crap.”

“Ti-time? But- but you’re a-a ghost?” Evan counters, and it sounds more like a question than anything. 

“Only in your head,” Future Connor explains. He says it like he’s telling a baby that the sky is blue. “I’m more of a… presence.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“Your fucking job!” Future Connor is pissed, Evan can tell. “Read the note. What does it fucking mean to you?”

“I-I don’t know!”

“Oh my fucking-” Future Connor takes Evan’s head in his hands. “Because you clearly need the push.”

And Future Connor kisses him.

Like, really kisses him. Like, aggressively smashing lips and too much tongue.

Evan is too shocked to do anything, much less resist. And if he’s honest, he’s not mad. 

Mostly just confused.

Evan can’t not think about health class and their unit on unhealthy relationships and if Future Connor was a human he could totally call the police or something, but Evan’s pretty sure sexual assault laws are different for ghosts.

Evan’s hands are hot but he’s also cold, because Future Connor’s dead ghost hands that are firmly pinning Evan’s arms against his sides are corpse hands and should not be a turn-on. But his lips are warm and Evan knows that it’s wrong and so, so weird, but he can’t bring himself to do anything.

He wonders if his mom burst in right now, if she would see Future Connor or if she would think Evan was making out with the air. He doesn’t want to test it, but he is curious.

He especially can’t stop when Future Connor decides he doesn’t want to bend and kiss Evan anymore and resolves to go for a full-on straddle. 

His math homework lies stagnant on his desk.

All Evan can think is ‘why?’

It isn’t until Future Connor momentarily pulls away that he realizes he said it out loud.

“I’m what you need me to be,” Future Connor murmurs against Evan’s lips. “And right now, this is what you need.”

Evan doesn’t quite believe him, but his thoughts are effectively stopped when Future Connor presses his lips to Evan’s neck and sucks at the tender skin at his collarbone, which sort of hurts but is not at all bad.

Evan thinks he’s going to pass out from the Twilight-Zone level weirdness of it all. He is feeling a little light-headed.

Future Connor shifts in his lap and Evan’s not sure if he’s just adjusting his position or if it’s an on-purpose grind, but when he doesn’t stop Evan deduces pretty quickly that he’s not just trying to get comfortable.

Evan just can’t stop thinking about why the hell a ghost wants to fuck him.

And Evan just stares at Future Connor. He’s never any of the ghosts this close, this… solid. He’s never been this close to real Connor either. 

His face is like a jigsaw. He has the telltale scars on his cheek and above his right eye, but his freckles are far and few between, and they unsettle Evan. They’re deep freckles, as if someone poked pins into Future Connor’s cheeks and nose. 

Evan, at probably the worst time to think of Shakespeare, remembers Romeo and Juliet. How Juliet had kissed Romeo’s freshly dead body and exclaimed, “thy lips are warm!”

Future Connor’s lips are warm. The lips roaming hungrily across his neck are warm, and if Evan closes his eyes he can imagine it’s real Connor kissing him in this way. 

Wait.

What?

Future Connor’s hair on his neck feels like snow as it tickles his bare skin. And although Future Connor’s lips are warm, the rest of him is cold and… bad. 

Evan wants to stop, wants to hide in the bathroom and overthink everything for an hour, but Future Connor’s insistent lips work at his collarbone and Evan wants to be swept up in the desire, wants to pretend real Connor’s warm hands are sneaking up the back of his shirt the way Future Connor’s frozen ones are.

Evan wrenches his eyes shut and pushes Future Connor off his lap. 

Future Connor’s eyes are icy, just like the rest of him. He just stands there, staring. There’s a strange shadow cast over him that looks almost like a noose.

Evan is shaking. From what, he doesn’t exactly know. Evan opts to stare down at his lap, which might not be the best decision at the moment. “I-”

“Do your job.”

When Evan looks up, Future Connor is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi it's me again!!!  
> i've had this chapter written since i started this wow  
> also i just came in from planting bulbs and i might have frostbite lmao  
> please comment to take my mind off my numb feet


	17. when you had not touched me yet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evan isn't a fan of being haunted.

Evan doesn’t stop shaking until the next morning. 

At dinner, his spoon clatters against the bowl as he tries to scoop up his soup. His mom looks at him strangely but doesn’t ask.

He doesn’t sleep that night. His bed is too cold but he doesn’t get up and get another blanket. 

It seems like perfect punishment, to have to lie in the cold all night.

Evan can’t help but feel like he needs punishment.

His shower was forty minutes long and he spent the entire time leaning against the wall and regretting life, scrubbing his arm with his mom’s loofah for so long that when he got out, it was red and raw. 

His mind just doesn’t stop. 

Unfortunately, their little interaction in English class means that Connor isn’t quite ignoring Evan anymore, and Evan really wishes they could just leave each other alone. 

Every time Connor says hi in the hallways Evan can feel something in his chest tighten, and he doesn’t like it. 

He’s so screwed.

Jared listens to very sexual music in the car, and Evan isn’t about that life. 

Like, he has respect for Janelle Monae, but couldn’t Jared just listen to Beethoven or something?

“Have you ever kissed someone?” Evan blurts one day in the car. 

Jared scoffs. “I mean, yeah. Why?”

Evan mumbles something like “I dunno.”

“Have you finally started going through puberty or something?” Jared laughs at his own joke. “That’s such a weird fucking question, dude.”

“Nevermind, forget I said anything.” Evan flushes red and pointedly stares out the window. “Sorry.”

“Nah, man, it’s chill.” Jared shrugs. “Yeah, I’ve kissed people. At camp and stuff. I kissed Lisa Barnton at the eighth grade formal, remember?”

Evan smiles in spite of himself. “Yeah.”

“What even happened to her?” Jared muses.

Evan’s grateful for the diversion. “She moved to Missouri, I think? She wrote it in your, uh, your yearbook.”

“Oh yeah. I forgot about that.”

“Was she a-a good kisser?”

“It was eighth grade.” Jared deadpans. “You know who was a good kisser? Shoshana Spielman. She was in the birchwood cabin and she was easily the best kisser at camp.”

“Why?”

“I don’t fucking know, dude. She took charge, I guess. She was that kind of person.”

Future Connor ‘took control.’ But it wasn't good. It was horrific and weird and made the bottom of Evan’s chest drop out when he thought about it. 

“You good?” Jared breaks the silence. “You just got all quiet and shit.”

Evan nodded. “Y-yeah. I’m good.”

“If you say so.” Jared turns into their parking space. “And, bee-tee-dubs, try and google your birds and bees shit before asking me out of nowhere.”

Evan doesn’t pay attention to this because the car next to them is there, and it’s occupied.

The beat-up truck’s driver’s seat is being co-opted by Connor Murphy, who’s leaning back in his seat and singing along to the radio. 

Evan doesn’t want Connor to notice him, or god forbid make eye contact with him, so he gets out as quickly as possible and walks past. 

Jared, however, walks right up to the driver’s side window and knocks on it.

Connor rolls down the window and fixes Jared with a death glare. It’s a manual window crank, and it looks a little silly, but he’s able to pull it off. 

“What do you want?”

Evan realizes from the look on Jared’s face that he doesn’t have a plan. “Oh. Hi.”

“What do you want?” Connor repeats.

“What were you singing?”

Connor had turned off the music when Jared approached, so they’re just standing in silence. “I wasn’t.”

Jared’s fumbling for words, something he usually never does. “Uh… never mind.”

“Hey, uh, what was the English homework?” Connor asks, not directly looking at Evan, but clearly talking to Evan.

Evan didn’t want to look at him. “Oh. Uh… ten pages of Hamlet and notes.”

Connor inhales through his teeth. “Fuck. Eh, I’ll wing it.”

They stand awkwardly for a few seconds, until Connor decides he’s had enough and starts cranking the window back up.

Jared shrugs. “See? Psycho.”

Evan’s still arguing with him the entire first period.

 

~

 

Evan’s hands are still shaky that afternoon as he does his homework. His desk no longer seems the clean, sacred space it used to. 

He tries to block out the static in his head by plugging in his earbuds and drowning the voices.

It works, temporarily.

It isn’t until he comes back from the bathroom that he sees Connor sitting on his desk, swinging his legs in the air and intently studying his physics notebook.

That mop of curly hair lifts and Connor says between his gap teeth, “what’s a field force?”

Evan’s tongue feels too big for his mouth. He tastes chalk. “Uh… uh… wha-what are you do-doing here?”

“What’s a field force?”

Evan’s left eye burns. He blinks the feeling away. He feels like the real Connor, twitching and ticcing. “It-it’s a non-contact force. Like gravity. Or electricity.”

Connor looks back at the notebook. “Oh.”

Somehow, the physics helped ground Evan a little. He doesn’t feel quite so queasy. “What are you doing here?”

“I dunno.” Little Connor jerks his jaw to the right a few times, and it reminds Evan of the real Connor. Which makes sense. “What’s… bo- boo-yant?”

“Buoyant,” Evan explains. His head hurts. “It’s, like, when things float in water. How did you get here?”

“I dunno,” Connor repeats. “I jus’ am.”

Evan affirmatively Does Not like having little Connor here right now. Not now, when he woke up last night freezing cold from the grips of a dark and dangerous dream about Connor, the kind of dream that made him cross his legs tight and try and fall immediately back to sleep. 

It feels like a sin to look at the childhood version of the person who made out with him no less than 48 hours earlier. 

Everything feels wrong. 

For the first time, Evan considers praying. But who would he pray to? It’s not like he believes in god. No kind god would allow this kind of torture on earth; he had decided that long ago. Could he get the house exorcised? The Connors have never failed in proclaiming their non-ghostness. 

So it doesn’t seem like there’s anything Evan can do.

Evan realizes his eyes are closed and when he opens them, Connor is gone.

His head aches, and he can hear the opening guitar twangs of the song Take Me Home, Country Roads playing somewhere.

Evan follows the sound down to the kitchen, where the radio his mother has by the stove has turned on. 

Evan’s finger hovers over the off switch. The lights of the built-in clock flash wildly, as if they’re telling him not to do what he’s about to. 

“I hear her voice, in the morning hour she calls me; the radio reminds me of my home far away… and dri-”

The flashing lights go dark. Evan sighs and unplugs the radio.

He’s had enough of this shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi it's saaatttuuurrddayyyy!  
> i'm bad at this  
> a short and late chapter  
> enjoy


	18. so weary, so worn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evan tries to reach out.

It turns out Alana can do seances. 

Who knew?

Evan does, because the two of them are currently sitting in the center of his bedroom holding hands over a bunch of his mom’s scented candles plus some of Alana’s stuff. Alana told Evan to gather any objects relating to the spirit that might help them come into contact, so between them lies the note and the radio from the kitchen.

“I’m hoping that we can use the radio as a makeshift spirit box,” Alana says as she sets it all up. “The ghosts have already tried to reach out to you once before through it, so they might again. I’m going to turn it on and just play some classical music really softly. If the ghost wants, he can change the station to relay messages.”

Evan nods. It all seems like hocus pocus, but Alana seems like she’s really invested in this, and she’s never been wrong before. 

They’re sitting inside of a circle of table salt, something Alana had put down beforehand. 

“To keep any unwanted and dangerous spirits out,” she had explained. “Granted, you’ve made contacts with these spirits before with no ill effects, but better safe than sorry. Don’t worry, I’ll help you vacuum it up.” 

So now they sit on his floor together at ten o’clock at night, both hoping for wildly different outcomes.

There are four candles, and Alana has instructed that they should recite a line of the note as they light them.

“I would leave fond farewells to friends if that’s what they happened to be,” they say. Alana lights the beeswax candle in the shape of a bear.

“And all the harm that e’er I’ve done, alas, it was to none but me.” The green one with the blue ribbon. 

“I leave behind this broken life and give to you my lone goodbye,” Alana lights one of her own candles, a black one meant to absorb negative energy.

“Don’t be a liar, know your desire, thus with a kiss I die.” With the last one, a pumpkin-shaped one, Evan starts to shake. 

Alana takes a deep breath. Evan follows suit. “Spirits, we invite you to join us. May the spirits tormenting Evan Hansen show themselves and feel welcome in our presence. We have a few questions for you.”

Evan’s hands are shaking, and Alana looks slightly worried, but it’s highly possible she just assumes it’s Evan’s anxiety.

But Evan knows what this is.

“Are there any spirits with us?” Alana demands. 

For a long time they sit in silence. Evan’s hands don’t still, and his heart does the same. Alana looks disappointed.

Finally, one of the candles flickers. It’s the pumpkin candle. Alana grins. “Welcome.”

“Why are you here?” Evan asks. He feels stupid talking into the air, but he knows who’s there. His shaking hands are proof enough. 

The radio starts to fritz. Mozart fades away, replaced by heavy static. Through the noise, Evan can hear a word- “pain.”

“Pain,” Alana repeats. “Spirits, are you hurt?”

“Help,” the radio says in its lurching manner. 

“Help,” Alana parrots back. Evan’s teeth are chattering now, and he can hear the clacking over the radio static. “Can you-”

“What do you need me to do?” Evan interrupts, his voice full of uncertainty and vibrato.

“Evan, you’re shaking!” Alana gasps. It seems like a stupid observation at this point. 

The radio is glitching wildly at this point, and they can hear all sorts of snippets of words, but only one discernable word that the radio seems to repeat over and over again. 

“Save.”

“Save.”

“Save.”

“How?” Evan demands. He’s yelling at the air, but he knows future Connor is here, in this very room, and Evan is angry. He’s fucking mad. He deserves answers from whatever apparition destroyed his life. 

The radio just keeps repeating.

“Save.”

“Save.”

Evan’s whole body is shaking at this point, like he’s out in the cold without a jacket. In a way, that’s how he feels.

“Why?” Evan screams. “Why me?”

The radio static cuts out and is replaced by a single, piercing high note, undercut by one word.

“Pretty.”

“Pretty.”

“Pretty.”

“Pretty.”

From behind Alana, Evan can see the gruesome figure of future Connor unfold out of the corner of the darkened room. Alana, who looks beyond worried, seems none the wiser.

“Evan? What’s wrong?” She begs, but Evan’s voice is long gone.

“Pretty.”

“Pretty.”

Evan pulls his hands away from Alana’s trying in vain to point at the rising apparition. Connor, in his snakelike, lithe way, comes stalking over to Evan, stepping over the salt circle barrier, until he’s massive and looming. He curls his back down to face eye to eye with Evan. Future Connor puts one finger under Evan’s chin and he can feel himself bite down on his tongue, hard.

Then Connor presses his cold lips against his own and everything goes black.

 

~

 

Evan wakes up on the floor.

He’s on his side, and Alana’s sitting directly in front of him.

Evan feels like there’s steel wool in his mouth. “Wha… ‘Lana?”

Alana immediately flings herself onto the ground to be at eye-level with Evan. “Oh my god! I was three seconds from calling 911. Evan, are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Evan mumbles. He rolls onto his back, which really hurts from lying on the floor. “What happened?”

The lights are on, and the candles are out. Evan doesn’t know what happened to the radio.

“Well, everything started going crazy, I’m sure you remember. Then you pointed at something behind me and you started, like, convulsing, and I thought you were going to die, then you passed out and I put you in recovery position because I thought you were going to choke on your own vomit or something and I was so scared, Evan!” 

Evan’s ears are ringing. “Jesus.”

“I’m so, so, so sorry!” Alana does really look traumatized by the whole ordeal, and Evan feels guilty for putting her through it. “I shouldn’t have put you through this, this is all my fault. I should’ve realized when you started shaking and stopped, but I just didn’t because I really wanted to see a ghost and I’m sorry-”

“Hey,” Evan says gently, sitting up with difficulty and placing a hand on Alana’s shoulder. “It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not!”

“I-I knew what I was getting myself into.” Evan bites his lip. “I shouldn't have scared you like that.”

“Well, on the bright side, at least we’ve encountered a ghost, right? That’s so cool!” Alana’s sunny grin comes back, along with that gleam of curiosity in her eyes. 

“He’s not a ghost,” Evan mutters.

Alana either doesn’t hear or doesn’t care. She stands up and dusts off her pants. “Look, I’m really sorry to leave you, but I do have to get home. My curfew is in ten minutes. Are you sure you’ll be fine?”

Evan heaves himself up off the ground. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

He wishes he could ask Alana to stay. Just to have another warm body in the house with him. But she has curfew and apparently church tomorrow morning, so he watches her drive off in her dad’s Subaru Outback and then climbs into his mother’s bed, burrowing under the covers and trying to envelop himself in the comfort of new surroundings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as a prize you get two chapters in one day!  
> i didn't mean for this two turn out so...paranormal whoops  
> comment bc i got into senior districts!!! we stan a classically trained kween  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHwY4ljmE8o


	19. and you won't disappoint me- i can do that myself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our boy isn't doing great.

Evan convinces his mom to let him take the day off from school on Monday. He says he needs a mental health day, which is kind of true, but there are still tremors in his hands and a bitter taste in the back of his mouth. He can’t sleep, because he can’t stop picturing future Connor coming out of the shadows and killing him. He doesn’t listen to music because he doesn’t trust the radio anymore.

So he just sits in the living room, reading his way through the side table in the hallway, but never keeping his head down for more than thirty seconds in fear that that’s when he’s going to get got.

Heidi stays home. She says that Sandra decided to pay her back for all of her favors over the years and covered her shift, but in reality, Evan heard her on the phone that morning, calling in sick.

She never calls in sick.

She’s worried about him. Evan’s gotten so used to his own suffering that he hardly even notices it anymore, but it’s clear that his mother has picked up on some other underlying issues. In her mind, Evan has gone to his normal Level 1 Anxiety to Level 50 in a day.

Evan’s been at Level 49 for a long time.

Heidi makes Evan soup for lunch. She hasn’t done that in years. Evan’s eating his soup in the kitchen when Alana tries to call. Initially, Evan wants to reject the call. He doesn’t really like talking on the phone, especially to people who just watched him have some sort of seizure. What if she hates him? What if she thinks he’s some sort of demon-possessed freak? Evan’s finger hovers over the red button. But… if Alana “Most Likely To Succeed” Beck is calling him during school, it’s probably important.

So he picks up. 

“Hi!” She says in a hushed voice. “I’m in study right now, but I really wanted to talk to you.”

That’s never good. “A-about what?”

“Saturday!” She explains. “You know-” she drops to a whisper, “the ghost?”

“Oh.”

“So I did some thinking.” There’s rustling on Alana’s end, like she’s taking out papers. Which, knowing Alana, she might be. “So. I was thinking about the radio messages and Country Roads. The phrase you said you heard- “the radio reminds me of my home far away-” I think that the ghost needs your help to go home. It clearly has some unfinished business and it needs your help to find rest. I can’t make heads or tails of the whole “pretty” thing, though. There’s something superficial about that, maybe some romantic or sexual energy?”

Evan’s already tortured enough, he doesn’t want Alana thinking about romantic or sexual energy. “Also, is it okay if I talk about the seance during Wych Club after school? I’ll leave you out of it, of course. I’ve just never had anything to share before.”

Evan doesn’t know what Witch Club is. He doesn’t think Alana’s a witch, but you never know with her.

“Wych Club. W-Y-C-H. I don’t know why it’s spelled like that. There’s a tree named that, or something. It’s a club for girls to talk about the supernatural and feminism and drink tea. It looks good on college applications.” 

“Oh.” Evan supposes it’s fine for her to talk about ghosts with a bunch of girls after school. After all, it must’ve been pretty cool to watch. “Okay.”

Alana rustles some papers. “Hey, you never told me who the ghost looked like. You said it was someone from our school, right?”

Evan doesn’t trust himself to not spill any secrets. Plus, Alana has gotten to nationals in debate twice, and he knows she’s probably the most adept person at school at getting dirt out of someone. “I, uh, I think my mom’s calling me?” Evan can almost see Alana raise her eyebrow incredulously over the phone. “I’ve got to go.”

“Alrighty.” Alana pauses, then takes a sharp breath. “Call me if anything else happens.”

“Okay,” Evan says quickly. He hangs up and slides his phone like a hockey puck across the kitchen table. He doesn’t want to look at it anymore.

He doesn’t trust electronics anymore.

Evan can hear soft footsteps behind him. “Hey, honey.” His mom’s hands gently rest on his shoulders, and Evan jumps. “How’re you doing?”

Evan turns to face her. There are deep stress lines on her face, making her look years older than she is. He feels so guilty that he did that to her. “Okay.”

Heidi allows herself a small sliver of a smile. “Want to watch something? I’ve just started The Good Place. Sharon from the train told me to watch it.”

“Uh… sure.” Evan needs the distraction.

He curls up next to his mom on the couch. When she asks him if he’s shaking, he just says he’s cold. 

He takes out his guitar for the first time in a long time.

It’s woefully out of tune, but something about the discordant strings makes Evan smile.

He plays in his bedroom, some song his mom taught him when he was little. 

In the room over, he can hear Heidi talking on the phone with someone.

“He’s playing the guitar,” she says softly. She sounds like she’s crying. “He’s getting better.”

Evan likes to pretend he’s getting better. 

There’s something in the acoustics that comforts Evan, and he puts aside his guitar and lies in bed, not trying to sleep and not trying to stay awake. He can see the last stragglers of the autumn leaves outside his window. His heart is still palpitating like it always is. He reads Anne of Green Gables, and he can’t not think of Connor as he does. 

There’s always that nagging feeling that something is deeply, horribly wrong.

But Evan can’t help but smile when Gilbert pulls Anne’s hair.

 

~

 

On Tuesday, upon returning to school, Evan finds out he was not sorely missed.

Other than Alana, it seems that no one even noticed he was out.

“What did we do in English yesterday?” Evan asked Jared that morning in the car.

“What do you mean? You were there,” Jared had responded.

Evan has never felt so utterly insignificant.

School seems to drag on forever. The week seems to taunt the students before they’re released for Thanksgiving break. It’s weird, because it still feels like Halloween was only a few days ago.

Friday is the very end of a long and painful spirit week in which no one dresses up. Half the day is taken up by a pep rally that half the school is planning on skipping.

After lunch, everyone is herded into the gym to sit on the bleachers for two hours. 

Evan wishes he were dead.

The cheerleaders all sit there in front with these satisfied smirks. They know they’re cheering in front of the school and they’re living for it. The audition chorus, who’s singing the national anthem, stands awkwardly in the center of the gym, chatting idly. 

The music they’re playing on the speakers is so, so loud.

The mascot, Rocky the Rocket, comes sauntering into the gym, and there are halfhearted cheers, mainly from the football players. The chorus kids don’t clap. Three seniors come out with microphones; everyone cheers, but Evan doesn’t even know who they are. His head still kind of hurts from the speakers. 

“Providence Park High, make some noise!” One of the seniors yells into the mic, sending ear-splitting feedback through the gym.

Evan does make noise, but it’s more of a quiet whimper than a cheer.

The chorus sings the national anthem and they’re very good, but Evan can’t help but notice the empty spot in the tenor section where Connor should be. 

By the time the cheerleaders start their routine, Evan’s had enough of the bass-boosted speakers and constant screaming from his peers. 

He’s sitting in the front row, so he swallows his guilt of getting up in the middle of the cheerleaders’ routine, grabs his backpack, and bolts. 

None of the teacher’s question where he’s going. He’s wearing the blue senior class shirt, so he can pretty much do anything without turning a lot of heads. A freshman, wearing the gray class shirt, tried to leave but was turned away by the teachers at the doors of the gym.

There are a few stragglers milling about the school. Mostly seniors, but there are a few juniors and underclassmen in the library, poring over laptops or books before the break. 

But it’s thankfully quiet in the hallways.

In the new extension, there’s a little lounge area with the most uncomfortable couches in the world; it’s a sparsely occupied, windowless space and the only entrance has a garage door that the school opens and closes at random intervals. 

Evan heads there.

There’s a good chance it’s empty, mainly because most of the school is at the pep rally, getting their ears blown out. 

Unfortunately, Evan wasn’t the only one who thought of the extension as a good place to hide.

Zoe’s there, sitting cross-legged on a couch, plucking at her guitar.

Evan’s about to turn around and leave when she calls out to him.

“Howdy, Evan!”

“Oh.” Evan turns around extremely awkwardly. “Hi.”

Zoe plucks a mournful tune on her guitar. It’s quick and solemn, and it doesn’t match her sunny and casual attitude. “What’s up? I haven’t seen you around lunch that often.” 

“Oh. Yeah. I’ve, uh, I’ve been around.”

“Cool, cool.” Zoe clicks her tongue. “Wanna sit?”

Evan sits. 

It’s quiet for a few moments, save for Zoe’s absent guitar. “Why aren’t you at the pep rally?” She asks eventually.

“Uh- too loud.”

Zoe nods knowingly. “Yeah. Connor used to always hang out in the library because the speakers gave him migraines. He skipped today, but it’s not like anyone’s taking attendance.” She shrugs. “I mean, attendance has never stopped him before.”

Evan attempts a lighthearted chuckle and fails. “Yeah.”

Zoe smiles. “Yeah.”

“Did- did I tell you about when he dropped corn on my head?” 

“No!” Zoe grins brightly. “Do tell.”

“We, um, we were at the picnic? The senior picnic? And he, uh, was sitting above me in a tree, and…” Evan trails off when he sees Zoe’s eyes on him. Just like Connor- those eyes, following his every move. 

“Keep going,” Zoe urges.

“He, uh, dropped a cob of corn on my head?” Zoe’s continuing stare is starting to kind of creep Evan out. “Sorry, that’s not- that’s not that funny. It’s not, like, a cool story or anything. Sorry.”

“You’re pretty cool, Evan.” 

Evan’s face turns bright red. “Uh… thanks?”

Zoe laughs oh-so-softly. “Are you friends with my brother?”

There’s a wad of nails in Evan’s throat. He coughs. “I mean, not-not really?”

“Good.”

Zoe takes a deep breath and kisses Evan.

And for his second kiss ever, it’s not bad.

There are human elements that weren’t there before. Zoe’s mouth tastes kind of like old grape soda but mainly like mouth, and in all honesty it sort of grosses Evan out.

He’s so busy just thinking about various aspects of Zoe’s mouth that Evan doesn’t even realize that Holy Shit, Zoe Murphy Just Kissed Him And He’s Sitting There Like A Goddamn Idiot And Do Something Already, Jesus!

Evan pulls away and wipes at his mouth with the back of his wrist. “Oh,” he says like an idiot.

Zoe’s face is beet red. “Sorry, I just-”

Evan stands up too fast from the couch, and his vision goes wobbly for a second. He stumbles a step backwards. 

“Evan, I-”

“Sorry, um, I should get back to the-the pep rally?” Evan’s words trip each other in his mouth, leaving a tangled string of gibberish hanging in the air. “They’re- they’re probably…”

Evan doesn’t finish his sentence.

He just runs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's pretty gay, evan
> 
> yeah how was everybody's thanksgiving? i made carrot cake for the first time and it was really good  
> please comment and make me happy


	20. taking my time, let the world turn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things happen

Friday night after the pep rally is opening night of the school play. They’re putting on Legally Blonde, and his mom almost trampled some kid getting tickets at the door. Evan really wishes he could just stay in, but Jared’s the lighting director and Evan’s pretty sure Heidi would shoot herself in the face if she didn’t get to see it.

For a high school show, it’s pretty good. Some senior girl plays Elle and funnily enough, her bio says she actually is going to Harvard on a music scholarship. 

Alana Beck plays one of the Delta Nu girls and Evan doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to un-see her “shaking junk” in a cheerleading uniform. 

The whole show is great, and Evan doesn’t think he’s ever seen his mother so happy. Apparently she was a big Legally Blonde fan back when the movie came out, when Evan was just a baby. 

In the hall outside the auditorium, where the actors can chat with their families and congratulate each other, Evan hangs by the water fountain and tries not to look awkward. 

Alana comes bouncing over in normal clothes but still in stage makeup and hair. 

“Hey, Evan!”

“You were great,” Evan offers blandly. He means it, but he finds it hard to speak. Alana’s eyelids are smeared with gold and he can’t stop staring. “I-I’ve never seen you wearing makeup before.”

Alana grins. “At least not to this degree, I know. That’s what my mom said.”

Evan laughs halfheartedly.

“Oh, I’d better say hi to Jackson. Thanks for coming!” Alana bounds away and Evan is once again left alone.

“Hey,” comes a quiet voice from behind him.

Evan turns and there’s Connor, real Connor, standing behind his shoulder, hunched and awkward. Connor has his hands shoved in his pockets and he doesn’t seem quite so tall when he slouches.

“Hi.”

Connor surveys the crowd. “That was pretty good, huh.”

“Ye-yeah.” Evan says. “My mom cried three times.”

Connor’s face splits into a dorky grin. “Dude, mine too!” He starts ticking off on his fingers. “She cried during that sad song, and the sad scene in the salon, then she cried during Legally Blonde, that song? Then I think she started crying all over again during the final song and she was just inconsolable by curtain call.”

Evan laughs. “I think my mom was a little more tame.”

Connor snorts. “God, I wish.”

Suddenly, Evan gets thrown forward by a force on his shoulders, which turns out to be Jared’s arm. Connor’s smile dissolves.

“Whassup, bitch? Did you like the lights?”

Evan wriggles out of Jared’s grasp. “Uh- yeah. They were… nice?”

“They had better have been!” Jared starts poking Evan’s shoulder relentlessly. “Hey. Hey. Hey. Guess what?”

Evan sighs. Connor does too. “What?”

“I got the job!”

Evan grins in spite of himself. “At the ski slope?”

“Yeah!”

Connor looks uncomfortable. Evan sympathises. He knows how it feels to be out of the loop.

 

~

 

That evening, Evan watches a lot of conspiracy videos. Buzzfeed Unsolved, Shane Dawson, Loey Lane. The works. Part of Evan sort of wants to write to Buzzfeed Unsolved, but he knows it’s just his innate desire to be a part of something. Besides, he knows what results he would get. Ryan would say it’s demons, Shane would say it’s nothing.

He considers writing down his story and framing it like one of those alternate reality games on twitter, but he’s never been a very good writer.

But as he comes back from his shower, his eye lands on something in the corner of his room.

It’s Evan’s corkboard from eighth grade.

And with sticky notes, pins, and string, Evan’s in business.

For an hour he writes down anything can remember and pins it up on the board, whether it makes sense or not. The note goes up there, along with the sheet music. Up goes a printed sheet of the lyrics to Take Me Home, Country Roads, with choice lines highlighted. By the end, the corkboard looks like a spiderweb of red yarn. 

Evan sinks back onto his bed. He finally gets why conspiracy people in TV shows are always depressed.

None of what has happened makes sense. 

Evan’s life is spiraling out of control and there’s no way to make heads or tails of any of it. 

He puts up one final post-it, with a single name written in all caps.

“ZOE.”

 

~

 

On Saturday morning, Evan’s mom asks him to take a plate of brownies over to the Kleinmans’. Jared’s Nana just died, and Heidi wants to offer them some support, even though she won’t be able to come to the funeral. 

It’s a cold, foggy morning, and Evan bundles up in his thick sweater and leaves for the ten-minute trek to the Kleinman’s house, his hands burning from the hot bottom of the pan. 

Evan likes walking in the morning. It’s nice to be out when there aren’t many cars. He drops of the brownies at Jared’s house, says hi to Jared’s mom, and turns around to go back. 

It’s colder without the heat of the brownies, and Evan’s face feels stiff from the cold. 

He’s just rounding onto Pleasant Street when he sees Connor coming from the opposite direction. It’s not a ghost, that’s for sure. He doesn’t have that feeling. Besides, this Connor walks heavily and just seems… tangible. 

Evan offers a halfhearted wave and Connor throws up a hand too, slowing his pace to meet with Evan. 

“Hey,” he says when they intersect.

“Hi,” Evan says.

“Where’re you going?” Connor asks. They’re stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, and the conversation surely can’t last more than thirty seconds. 

“Oh. Home?”

“Cool.” Connor seems to think for a second. “Let me walk you.”

“Oh, I, uh, you don’t need to?” 

“Eh, I have nowhere else to go.” Connor pivots on his heel to match Evan. “Lead the way.”

Evan tentatively starts walking again. What if this is just a ploy for Connor to memorize Evan’s address and then go to his house at night and murder him? But he’s already been to Evan’s house when he picked him up for Halloween.

For once, Connor isn’t fidgeting. He walks with his hands in his pockets, his head tilted up and his eyes closed against the sun. Connor’s cheeks and nose are pink, as if he’s been out here for a while. His face is washed in the golden light of morning. Evan likes the way his breath turns into mist in the air, curling out of his nostrils and mouth like a dragon. 

Evan can’t help but look. He’s so different than the ghosts in every way. Compared to him, the ghosts are a bad photocopy, one where the paper jammed and the ink smeared across the middle. 

Connor opens his eyes and instead of looking down, he keeps his head tilted up, his eyes raking across the top of the treeline. Evan doesn’t want to break the silence, and fortunately, Connor does it for him. “God, I love walking in the morning.”

“Yeah.”

“See, look.” Connor points at the trees over a house in the distance. “The moon against the blue sky and those pine trees, with the sun on the top.” He lets his hand fall. A huge grin spreads across his face. “Absolutely beautiful.”

Evan still can’t tear his eyes away. “Yeah.”

Evan tries to look at the world through Connor’s eyes. The frost on the roofs of the houses, making the tile glitter. The few autumn leaves still clinging to the tree branches. Evan never would imagine that Connor sees the world in this way.

Evan realizes they’ve passed his house.

But he’s anxious and a people pleaser and desperately afraid of doing something wrong, so he walks with Connor for three more blocks.

But maybe Evan just wanted to.

It’s interesting, free choice. Because Evan could’ve stopped and gone back but he didn’t. He couldn’t. 

He simply didn’t want to leave.

And maybe he just didn’t want to be lonely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm late  
> this is a pretty shitty chapter whatevr  
> let! alana! shake! junk! 2k18!


	21. what is louder than a horn?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zoe lets some things slip.

It was kind of awkward going back to sitting at Zoe’s table at lunch. He tried sitting with Jared and his friends, but they only talked about robotics scrimmages and why the torque on the left axle was off, and Evan felt more left out than he ever did with the band kids. 

So he resumes his place at the band table but takes pains to sit on opposite sides from Zoe. It’s kind of difficult considering the tables are circular, but he makes do. All the band kids gab on and on, seemingly unaware of the tense awkwardness that hangs in the air between Evan and Zoe. 

One day, thought it gets to be too much. Zoe’s staring him down across the table, and her eyes feel like icicles piercing Evan’s skin. 

“Hey, uh, Zoe?” Evan says. He fully expects himself to ask her why she’s staring, but instead his mouth says, “can we talk?”

A satisfied look comes over Zoe’s face, and it seems that this was the desired outcome of the creepy eyes. Zoe stands up and Evan does too, and they find themselves in that same corner of the extension as before, perfectly alone.

“What’s up?” Zoe asks, knowing full well what’s up. 

Evan’s suddenly regretting everything. He can’t confront Zoe, not about anything. Their friendship is thin enough as it is. “Um.”

“You wanted to talk about… the kiss, right?” Zoe supplies.

“Yeah. Sorry.”

Zoe puts up a hand. “I’m sorry too. I just- if you weren’t into it, it’ll never happen again.”

“Why…” Evan takes a deep breath. “Before you- you know, did the thing. Why, um, why did you ask me if I was friends with Connor?”

Zoe laughs breathily. “Oh, that was stupid. Don’t read anything from that.”

“Nono, I, um- really, what did it mean?” 

“Why do you care?” Zoe’s jaw is set in that way, the same way Connor clenches his jaw when he’s pissed. Which is usually. “He’s not even here.”

Evan doesn’t really know why he cares. “I don’t know.”

“Just forget it.”

There’s a long silence. Zoe keeps opening her mouth as if to say something, then closes it. 

“Would you still have kissed me if I had said yes?” Evan blurts.

Zoe sighs. “I don’t know? I guess?” She sounds defensive, and Evan’s pretty sure he’s pushed to far. “My brother’s not a… cool guy or whatever. You don’t want to be friends with him.”

“Why not?” Evan says stupidly. 

“Why do you care? This conversation isn’t supposed to be about fucking Connor!” Zoe snaps. “We’re friends- at least I think we are. You’ve talked to Connor what, three times? I can guarantee he doesn’t want to be friends with you!” 

“Wh-why?”

“It’s this thing that he does, I think. He makes friends with boys and then, you know, beds them and leaves them in the dust. There was this kid Miguel-”

“Connor’s gay?”

Zoe stands up, and Evan realizes how frighteningly similar she is to her brother when she’s mad. “That’s all you fucking got out of that? He- he’s a life ruiner! I’m your fucking friend!”

“I just, I don’t-”

“He’s got mouth herpes! He’s got genetic mouth herpes, did you know that?”

Evan has to suppress a giggle at that. But Zoe’s face is entirely serious. “Oh. I mean, I’m not planning on kissing him, so…”

“Well, he wants to fuck you.” 

That sentence sends a tsunami of ice water pouring through Evan’s veins. “What?” He says. His voice sounds distant and waterlogged in his ears.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It- wh- yes it does!” Evan sputters.

Zoe’s face is stony. “Whatever. I shouldn’t have brought it up, okay? Forget it.” 

“I…”

“Whatever,” Zoe repeats, as if she’s telling herself to believe that she doesn’t care. “I don’t want to date you or anything. I was stupid.”

It sort of stings. Sure, Evan hasn’t really liked Zoe in that way since junior year, but it hurts that she’s so cold about the whole thing. 

“I just need some space, okay?” Zoe stands up and starts to back away. “You don’t want to be friends with Connor, trust me. Just- just promise me you won’t get caught in his… web.”

Evan’s mouth is just hanging open like a dead fish, and he realizes he probably looks stupid as hell. “I- okay?”

“Good.” Zoe frowns. “See you around.”

 

~

 

“Wait. She actually said ‘bed them?’” Jared says over the phone. “That’s fucking hilarious, dude. That’s, like, what a suburban mom from the 1800s would say.”

Evan can’t help but laugh at that. “Bed them!” 

“Do you think it’s true? I mean, she would know best, right?” 

“I don’t know.” Evan shrugs, even though he knows Jared can’t see him. “I mean, maybe he is, um, gay, but I’ve never seen him with other people. Like, hanging out?”

“That’s valid,” Jared asserts. Evan can hear him loudly chewing corn chips on the other side of the line. 

“Zoe said Connor had herpes.”

Jared erupts into a coughing fit, and Evan is genuinely worried he’s dying. “Hold on,” he wheezes. “I choked on a chip. He has herpes?

“Genetic mouth herpes,” Evan corrects him. “That’s what Zoe said.”

Jared’s quiet for a second. “If it’s genetic,” he says slowly, “does Zoe have it too?”

“Oh,” Evan says. “I didn’t think of that.”

“Does this mean you have mouth herpes now?” Jared’s voice is light with humor. “They say most people never experience symptoms.”

“I-I hope not!”

“I’d hate to have to be the one to tell Heidi that you have mouth herpes. Well, maybe she’d be happy that her little boy is getting out and meeting people and such.”

“Jared!” Evan hisses. “You can’t just tell my mom I have herpes!”

Jared laughs. “Not now, but maybe later. If I ever need a favor.”

“She also…” Evan doesn’t know if he wants to tell Jared this. He doesn’t even want to tell himself this. “She also said Connor wanted to fuck me?”

“Hold the phone!” 

“Okay?”

“What the FUCK?”

Evan feels a needle press into the back of his throat. “Yeah.”

“First it was the herpes thing, and now she’s saying that Connor Murphy wants to fuck you?”

“Yeah?”

“Why?”

“I don’t know? Maybe she, um…”

“No, I mean why does Connor want to fuck you?”

“I’m offended,” Evan says, after a long pause.

“What?”

“That you think I’m unfuckable.”

Jared guffaws on the other side of the line. “Dude! I mean, I never really pictured Connor Murphy wanting to fuck anyone at all. Like, he just sort of hovered in that weird gossip sphere of asexuality, you know?”

Evan thinks about this for a second. “No.”

“Like, nobody’s ever like, ‘oh, Connor Murphy’s hanging out with Hayley Beckstandza, I wonder if they’re dating.’ If something like that ever happened, it’d be like, ‘oh, Connor Murphy’s hanging out with Hayley Beckstandza. I wonder if I should call the police.’”

“Connor would never hang out with Hayley Beckstandza,” Evan says.

“Exactly,” Jared says. “I mean, if you were hanging out with Hayley Beckstandza, I would be like, ‘you go, man!’”

“Isn’t she gay?”

“It doesn’t matter.” There’s a pause. “Back to the topic at hand, Connor wants to fuck you?”

Evan doesn’t really know what to say. What is he supposed to tell Jared? That there’s a ghost that already wanted to fuck him so it’s not such a biggie that the real one does too? And how would he even know if Zoe was just making stuff up to mess with him?

“She- she might have been lying?”

“I hope so,” Jared says confidently. “Because you’ve only talked, like, twice and that would be super fucking creepy.”

Evan tastefully doesn’t bring up Jared’s sophomore crush on Jessica Marlow, someone who he had literally never talked to, only ever seen on the Providence Park Student News. 

“So here’s the million-dollar question,” Jared muses. “Do you want to fuck Connor?”

“Wh- no!” Evan squeaks. 

“I dunno, you answered pretty fast.”

“Do you want to fuck Nick Cole?” Evan retorts, fully aware of Jared’s newest hopeless crush from physics class.

“That’s cold, man.”

Evan knows it is, but he doesn’t feel guilty. Jared’s out of line, too. “Whatever.”

“Whatever,” Jared parrots. “I need to go. My mom needs help downstairs.”

Evan’s pretty sure that Jared’s lying. “Okay.”

“See ya.”

“Bye.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi i had to write an entire english essay in a day so you didn't get this on thursday but idc  
> my trad group performed for the first time last night and we killed it!! i'm so proud of my goats


	22. babe, there's something lonesome about you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evan goes to a party and hates it (big mood)

“So, Evan.” Dr. Sherman leans forward in his chair. “Did you remember to bring a letter?”

Evan coughs. “Uh- yeah.”

He was really hoping Dr. Sherman wouldn’t ask about this week’s letter. He wrote it at midnight, sleep deprived, after doing an entire lab report in an hour. 

“Would you mind reading it?”

“Uh…” he knows he can’t say no. It’s like gym class. The air of decision is completely false. That’s one of the red flags of a dystopian society, right? Illusion of choice? “Sure.”

Evan squints at the paper. His hands are shaking, even though he’s done this a million times before. “Dear Evan Hansen.”

Dr. Sherman smiles, pleased. Evan doesn’t reciprocate.

“Tomorrow’s going to be a good day, and here’s why. You have a B+ in math right now-“

Except Evan knows it’s going to drop down to a C after he gets back that test he flunked.

“And you’re not paired with a slacker on your history project.”

He’s paired with Jess Chase, who’s such a perfectionist she’s known as being the worst person to get stuck in a group with.

“Zoe’s not really talking to you, but that’s fine-“

It’s not fine.

“Because you can sit at Jared’s table at lunch.”

He’s going to end up sitting alone.

“There’s a lot of stuff going on in your life but you don’t feel actively suicidal, which is great.”

That’s true. Even though Evan’s convinced he’s going to die any day now, at least he doesn’t think it’ll be at his own hands anymore.

“Tomorrow you’re going to do all your homework early and then when that’s done, you’re going to watch the Good Place with your mom.”

Absolute lie.

“Your favorite character is Chidi because you relate to the fork in the garbage disposal thing but remember, Chidi finds love and happiness.”

Not the happiness thing. Evan’s pretty sure Chidi’s never been truly happy in his life.

“Maybe you won’t find an Eleanor, but at least you can try and be friends with her.”

Dr. Sherman cocks his head and scribbles something down in his notebook.

“You’re going to kill it.”

No he’s not.

“Sincerely, me.”

“This is a nice letter, Evan,” Dr. Sherman begins. “I think you really believe what you’re writing.”

Does he now?

“Do you think you’re staking too much of your happiness on Eleanor?”

“What?”

“When you were talking about, uh-” Dr. Sherman glances back down at his notes, “Chidi, you listed first love and then happiness. Do you think you place love and happiness on the same pedestal?”

“Uh… no?” 

“This person who you’re labelling as your Eleanor, do you think they’re going to be the key to your happiness?”

Maybe. 

“No?”

Dr. Sherman leans forward. “Evan, only you can bring about your own happiness. All As and a girlfriend can’t bring you genuine happiness. You have to find that in yourself.”

“Okay.”

“What do you think you can do to find happiness for yourself?” Dr. Sherman asks, his pencil poised over the notepad.

“Uh… read more?” Evan offers. Connor reads a lot. Granted, he doesn’t seem like the happiest person. “I want to work on the guitar more.”

“I’ve found that it helps to have goals. Specific songs you want to learn or books you want to read.”

Evan bites his lip and thinks. “Uh… my friend-” is it fair to call Connor his friend? No, right? “Um, this kid I know from school? He, uh, got me to read Anne of Green Gables? I want to finish that book.”

Dr. Sherman smiles. “Those were my sister’s favorite books as a kid. She had every book in the series.”

“I don’t have any songs I want to learn? But, um, next week I’ll tell you if I’ve thought of anything.”

“That sounds great, Evan.”

 

~

 

Evan’s at a school-sponsored dance and he wants to blow his fucking brains out.

It’s the winter semi-formal, and Heidi was convinced that Evan needed to go. He went as a freshman, cried so hard he threw up, and went home early. But apparently Evan really, really needs to go as a senior to really lock in that school spirit, right?

He’s wearing his black dress pants and a stupid red button-down, all of which are a size too small. 

Heidi drops him off at the rec center because he doesn’t have a date to drive with. 

Two girls are at the door taking money, and Alana darts back and forth, making sure everything’s in order.

“Fifteen dollars,” Alana says, completely stealing the thunder of the two girls. “Hi, Evan!”

Evan wonders if Alana sees him as just another interaction or if she sees him as Ghost Boy, maybe Convulsion Boy. But Evan knows he’s not human in her eyes.

“Hi.”

“Enjoy the dance!” Alana says with a chipper grin.

Evan doesn’t think there’s much luck in that department.

Inside the rec center, the dance hall is packed wall to wall with students. Obnoxious rap music is blaring, and Evan almost doesn’t want to wade into the ocean of sweaty bodies. But he does, because the snacks are on the other side of the room.

Evan sticks to the sides of the room, trying to attract as little attention as possible. He makes it to the food, but stops. What if it’s actually not free? What if he’s supposed to do something before he eats the food? What if it’s for another event? 

Evan resigns to let himself starve. 

He scans the crowd for people he knows. Jared’s not here, he’s at his cousin’s bat mitzvah. Alana’s out in the hallway. He sees Zoe dancing with a couple other juniors, but Evan really doesn’t want to barge into their pack. 

So that leaves him with… no friends.

It’s pretty depressing that Evan has, like, six friends, max. There’s a girl from his sophomore English class that he’s considering talking to, but as he starts to move forward another person comes up to meet the girl, wrapping an arm around her hips and kissing her in a way that makes it clear spectators aren’t welcome. So Evan turns away.

The DJ cranks the music even louder, which Evan didn’t even know was possible. Everyone cheers. Apparently the song is very popular, but Evan’s never heard it before in his life. At the other end of the wall, a door opens, flooding the corner of the dimly lit-room with white light. The bathroom.

Evan makes a beeline for his fluorescent sanctuary. It’s empty, thank god. 

He walks in and there’s a little low table on the opposite wall with a nice little pyramid of toilet paper. Evan sits on the edge of the table and tries not to hyperventilate. There’s still music seeping in from under the door. It’s still too loud.

Evan can tell he’s teetering on the edge of a panic attack. His heart is holding itself up shakily and every noise seems amplified. So he presses his hands over his ears and tries to breathe deeply. 

Someone comes out of a stall and starts washing their hands. They’re humming.

Evan looks up, and his eyes are met with the same eyes from English class.

It’s Connor, in a black sweater and combat boots. His mouth sits in a comfortable downturn. Evan puts his hands down and realizes that Connor has earbuds in. Regardless, Connor steps forward. Evan motions for Connor to sit on the little table next to him.

“Hey,” Connor says.

“Hey,” Evan parrots.

Connor takes out one earbud. “Whatcha doing?”

Evan shrugs. “Trying to not die.”

Connor grins and Evan’s forgotten how much he likes Connor’s smile. “Same. I want to blow my fucking brains out.”

They sit in silence for a while until Connor asks, “why’d you come?”

“My mom thinks I need to get out more,” Evan answers. “You?”

“Same.” 

“I don’t like dances.”

Connor runs his fingers over the creases in his dress pants. “Valid. Me neither. The music gives me a headache.”

“It’s loud,” Evan notes, stupidly.

“Yeah.”

More silence. Someone else comes in and doesn’t give the two a second glance. They just pee, wash their hands, and leave. 

“Wanna learn a fun fact about pirates?” Connor asks once the person leaves. He’s dead serious.

“Uh… yeah?”

“So you know how pirates wear eye patches?” 

Evan nods.

“Turns out, they wear them for night vision. Basically, they would have one eye always in the dark because when they went below deck to get gunpowder and stuff, they couldn’t have lanterns down there. ‘Cause, you know… explosions. So they’d keep the night vision in one eye and then when they went into the dark, they’d just flip the eye patch up and see totally fine.”

Evan smiles, and Connor flashes the cocky grin of a little kid who’s smart and knows it. “That’s pretty cool.”

“I know.” For one of the first times Connor smiles, a real, genuine smile. Connor ducks his head like he’s embarrassed but Evan can see the beauty of those white teeth and that lopsided smirk. “Do you know any fun facts?”

Evan’s stomach feels wretched and he can’t decipher why. He’s happy. He’s having a good time. Connor’s smiling and Evan’s smiling and the song outside the door changes. People outside whoop. It’s not ghosts. Evan’s stomach feels weird and it’s not ghosts, it’s something else. 

It’s something about Connor’s smile.

“The most shoplifted food in America is candy,” Evan says.

Connor nods. “I get that. Obesity epidemic and all that. What about other places? Do you know?”

“Uh- in Europe, it’s cheese.”

Connor laughs. Evan could listen to him laugh all day. “Damn, now I want cheese.”

Evan’s stomach rumbles, making them both giggle. “Me too.”

“There’s mozzarella sticks at the snack bar,” Connor says. “Wanna brave the crowd and nab some?”

A lump forms in Evan’s throat. He can’t go back out into the dance, with the sweaty bodies and the painfully loud music. “No.”

Connor bites his lip. “Well, I do. Imma get some. Don’t wait up.” 

He puts the earbud he took out before back in and winks at Evan before disappearing out the bathroom door.

Evan’s phone buzzes. It’s a text from his mom, asking how it’s going.

Fine, Evan replies. 

And he is fine. 

Connor comes back a minute later ladened with free food. He plunks down next to Evan and starts unloading his haul. He also takes out both of his earbuds this time, which makes Evan weirdly happy.

“I’ve got… mozzarella sticks, of course, brownies, pigs in a blanket, two cokes, a handful of chips, and, uh…” He holds up a water cup of mysterious white mush. “Mashed potatoes.”

Evan can’t help but smile. “You- you didn’t have to get so much.”

“Eh, it’s all free. Besides,” he slaps his stomach, “I’m a hungry boy.”

“Oh!” Evan blurts. “Another fact!”

Connor leans forward, balancing his chin on his fist. “I’m listening.”

“Halloween is the second largest commercial holiday in the United States.”

“That’s understandable,” Connor muses. “I wonder what the others are? Probably Christmas first. And, you know, the holiday season? I know a lot of people who splurge on ironic Hanukkah hats.”

“What about the third?” Evan asks. “Valentine’s Day?”

“Maybe New Year’s Eve?”

Evan shrugs. “I don’t know? I, uh, I learned that fact from a Halloween Kahoot.”

“Dope,” Connor says. He takes a mozzarella stick and bites off the end, making the cheese pull at least a few inches before snapping.

They slowly eat their way through Connor’s smorgasbord, sharing fun facts. Connor plays some music, including some Hozier song about Eden with incomprehensible lyrics that Connor says is his favorite song.

It is a pretty good song. And from what Evan can piece together from the lyrics, it’s fitting for Connor. 

Eventually they get to the mashed potatoes. 

It’s the only thing left, and both of them look at it with apprehension.

“I didn’t get forks,” Connor says.

“No.”

Connor starts to stand. “I’ll go get some-”

“Don’t,” Evan says. “It’ll be fine.”

“I washed my hands,” Connor says. “Did you?”

Evan nods.

Connor flashes Evan that smile and plunges his index finger into the cup, scraping the potato off his finger with his teeth. Evan laughs and does the same.

They can’t stop laughing as they eat. Something about scooping lukewarm potatoes out of a plastic cup with your hands in the bathroom of the rec center is just really, really stupid. 

“How- how’d you get mashed potatoes in your hair?” Evan says between laughs.

Connor giggles uncontrollably. “I don’t know!”

Evan leans forward to try and pick it out and in that moment, both of them fall silent.

Their faces are close. Really close. 

Evan could count Connor’s freckles.

He sort of wants to.

God Is A Woman is playing outside and if this was a movie, this is when they would kiss. 

The music swells and Evan picks the mashed potato out of Connor’s hair and they pull apart, pretending neither of them had even thought about the possibility of anything happening. 

When Heidi comes to pick Evan up, she asks if Connor needs a ride. He declines.

As they drive home, they see Connor walking alone for a second before they whip around the corner. 

Evan’s mom quizzes him about the party and Evan lies, saying that he danced with some friends. 

When he goes to bed that night, he falls asleep surprisingly easily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi this is a wednesday and you wanna know why?? bc my english teacher, rob, robbie, the robster, assigned us two consecutive essays with no time to do them so as soon as i put this out imma start working on my essay due friday that i literally haven't finished i love accelerated classes
> 
> hi i'd like to thank shyberius for being my pal and also for drawing a really cool picture of connor saying "hey" which is,,, very in character
> 
> oh also i got a callback for the musical ;)  
> see y'all


	23. and i know that you think it's just a fantasy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are actually kind of happy.

The audition choir joins them again to rehearse for the winter concert. Last time, the audition group sat to the side, like they were segregated from the non-auditioned plebeians. This time, the groups mingle. Connor sits next to Evan in the tenor section. They each read their music innocently, both pretending that they hadn’t seen each other lick mashed potatoes off of their fingers just a few nights before. 

The choirs are singing Personent Hodie and the Hallelujah Chorus together for the winter concert. Evan, a Jew, has never really sung the songs before chorus. Of course he had sung a little bit of the Hallelujah Chorus as a joke, but he’d never gotten past measure 10. Connor, however, sings the songs like he’s been singing them since he was born. Which he probably has.

Connor’s voice is clear and perfect for classical music and he sings Latin with such ease. Evan hates Latin. He always pronounces it wrong. He always messes up on “qui nobis est natus.”

Connor does little hand motions in his seat during the Hallelujah Chorus. It’s clearly an inside joke in his choir, because some other tenors are doing it along with him, as well as doing little shimmies and headbanging to the alto part. 

Evan thinks it’s pretty funny. He wishes his chorus had inside jokes, but it’s probably for the best that they don’t. Evan doesn’t think he could handle that.

While the director is working with the sopranos, Connor leans over to Evan. “Hey,” he half-whispers. “You’re holding out the quarter note in measure 38 for too long.”

“Oh,” Evan whispers back. “I’ve just been… muddling through.”

“Just thought I’d let you know,” Connor says, and leans back into his own chair. 

“Thanks.”

 

~

 

Evan can’t stop thinking about Connor.

This development isn’t necessarily new or striking. Evan’s been thinking about Connor for a while now. But this time it’s different; Evan used to want nothing to do with Connor. He wanted him and his ghosts to just leave him alone and let him go back to the way his life was before he was tossed in the centrifuge that defines his life now. 

But Evan can’t stop looking at Connor. In the hallway, at lunch, in English class, when Connor’s head is down or his eyes are trained on the teacher. The way he moves, the way he speaks, the way his legs bounce under his desk. 

“Dude,” Jared says one morning in the car. “What did you do to the Murphys?”

Evan chokes on a little bit of bagel. “What?”

“Like, in school. I mean, Connor’s been, like, fawning over you forever, and whenever Zoe sees you she fixes you with this… death glare. Is it about the herpes thing?”

Evan slumps down in his seat. “You- I already spilled that tea.” 

“Yeah, I know. But they’re like, obsessed with you. Both of them.” Jared snorts. “You know, I’m just waiting for a Stacy’s Mom situation.”

Evan’s face burns. “I-I’m not into their mom!”

“I bet you’re much better than big shot lawyer Murphy.” Jared pulls into their parking space, and Evan expects the conversation to end. Unfortunately, Evan doesn’t often get what he wants. “I’d expect you to be a very gentle lover. Not a quality you’d find in a lawyer.”

Connor’s getting out of his car too. Unfortunately, Jared’s on the wrong side of the car and he’s talking way too loud. He can’t see Connor, and Connor’s not making any attempt to be noticed. Evan’s frozen standing by the passenger side door, watching Connor mess with his backpack in the front seat with the door open, completely aware of his surroundings.

Jared comes swaggering over to the passenger side singing brashly and loudly with no respect for decorum. “Connor, can’t you see? You’re just not the girl for me; I know it might be wrong-”

Connor and Jared lock eyes. 

“Fuck,” Jared says.

“IPROMISEIDON’TWANTTOHAVESEXWITHYOURMOM!” Evan blurts, much too loudly. 

And Connor actually laughs. “That’s not what I was getting from this-” he motions generally to Evan and Jared- “whole deal.”

“You’re not going to kill me?” Jared says. He sounds really pathetic, but Evan can see the fear of god in his eyes.

“Let me sleep on it.” Connor shoulders his bag and slams the car door. “See you in English, Hansen.”

Evan can’t believe that just happened. 

“I swear to god if you don’t get that dopey grin off your face, I’m going to slap you.” Jared says.

In English class, they peer edit each other’s essays. Connor makes good comments, even though he keeps changing the font from comic sans to arial. 

“Comic sans is supposed to improve writing flow and de-decrease writer’s block!” Evan protests. “And it- it’s one of the few dyslexia friendly fonts!”

“You’re still a heathen,” Connor says, and changes it.

Evan wonders if they could ever be friends. Real friends, the kind who go out and do stuff together, not just two people who occasionally have nice conversation. 

Evan suddenly remembers that picture he had created of the two of them driving in Zoe’s convertible, top down, living purely for the zest of life.

Evan looks at Connor hunched over his computer, typing feverishly with a concentrated downturn to his lips, and can’t help but feel refreshed. It’s like his mind was aired out, all the doors and windows open to let the warm summer breeze in. 

 

~

 

That night, Evan’s mom comes home early and the two of them eat spaghetti together and it’s almost happy.

“So,” Heidi says. “Have you made any new friends at school? Any girls caught your eye?”

“No,” Evan says, truthfully. “I’ve, uh, I guess I’ve made friends? Acquaintances?”

Heidi’s whole face lights up. “Really? Like who?”

“Um, a kid named Connor from English class?” 

That’s a lie. They’re not friends. They’re not even acquaintances. But it seems like a good idea to have someone in his back pocket to lie about to his mother.

“That’s great! What’s he like?”

“Oh.” Why did Evan think she wouldn’t ask this? “He’s… nice.”

“Just nice?”

“I don’t know? Uh… we talked at the dance?” ‘Talked’ is an understatement. Evan’s haunted by those mashed potatoes. 

“See? I told you the dance would be fun!” 

Evan smiles and stabs at his pasta. “I guess.”

“Do you think we should invite him over for dinner some night?”

That would be a terrible idea. Evan panics and blurts, “he can’t do dinner. He, uh… has music lessons.”

Fuck.

Connor sings, though, right? So it’s not too outrageous of a lie, right?

“That’s so neat!” Heidi says, swallowing Evan’s lie hook, line, and sinker. “What does he play?”

“He sings?”

Heidi grins. “He sounds like a pretty cool kid.”

Evan can’t help but smile with his mother. “Yeah.”

“And when will I get to meet him?” Heidi asks.

“Never,” Evan says.

It seems so ideal. It seems like there should be a camera there by the stove and a laugh track playing overhead but it’s just the two of them eating in silence. And that’s exactly how Evan likes it.

Across town, the Murphys are having a tense dinner of turkey and potatoes, and they’re sitting in absolute silence as classical music plays from the other room. Zoe will say the turkey is a little dry and get death glares from the rest of the table. She’ll cry in the shower because she remembers how close she and her brother used to be. Connor won’t cry. He doesn’t cry anymore.

But Evan doesn’t know this. All he knows is his mother and the food in front of him and the casual conversation he craved for so long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guys pray for me my nhd outline is due at 11 tonight and no one else in my group is doing any work so if anyone knows a lot about the parkman-webster murder case feel free to hmu
> 
> please comment so that i don't kill myself over this goddamn project   
> also staceys mom is a genuinely good song and if you disagree you can catch these hands


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Breakfast.

Evan has Friday off of school because of some sort of professional development day for the teachers; unfortunately, the choir was volunteered to sing in the morning. Only about twenty people showed up and they bitched the whole time about why the teachers even needed the chorus to sing the national anthem at all.

They got to school at 7:30 and sang at 8:00. By the time they were done, it was only 8:10.

Evan was ready to go home and go right back to sleep. Days off are the perfect days to recharge and take a long shower without worrying about missed work, and Evan wasn’t planning on giving that up.

Then someone had the genius idea of going out for breakfast.

There was a long debate about where to go, how to pay, who would drive, and how long it would take. Evan’s just waiting for his mom to respond to his plea for a ride when one of the juniors turns to him and says, “you’re coming, right?”

“Uh… no?”

“Why not?” Another junior says. “It’ll be fun.”

“I-I don’t have money.”

“We’re going to pay as a group anyway. We can just cover you, it’ll be fine.”

Evan’s suddenly aware of Connor’s eyes on him. “Okay.”

They pile into Emily Frasier’s mom’s car, a five-seat station wagon with too many bumper stickers on the back. There are six of them there, and Connor ends up sitting in the trunk. Emily makes him lie down so that the cops don’t see him, which Evan wholeheartedly supports. His mom would never forgive him if he got arrested. Connor obliges, but he sticks his hand up sporadically so that any passerby can just see a disembodied hand in the rear window. 

Whenever he does this, he cranes his neck to flash Evan that lopsided smile. It almost calms Evan’s racing heart. 

They get to the restaurant, a cheap brunch place with few customers and even fewer waiters. The ten kids file into the restaurant and Evan can see the soul leave the body of one of the waitresses on shift. 

It’s seat yourself, and they push together three tables to make one big frankentable in the corner of the room. Connor sits next to Evan.

The waitress comes over to take their drink order. They agreed to all get water to cut costs, so Evan doesn’t have to say anything, just nod and smile when Jess Huang says, “water for the table, please.”

Evan’s never spent a long time around chorus kids outside of class, and he’ll be the first to announce that they’re goddamn weird. 

Someone Evan doesn’t recognize is in a very passionate conversation about the Hunchback of Notre Dame at the end of the table. He tries to hear what it’s about, and he doesn’t need to try for long, because they turn to the entire table and say, “hey, if you were Esmeralda, would you rather burn at the stake or have sex with Frollo?”

Half the table says “burn” at the exact same time as the other half says “fuck him.”

“What?” Three different people exclaim.

“I would totally go for the stake,” one girl says. “No one wants to fuck an old priest.”

“That’s the thing!” Another says. “You fuck him and then say that you were coerced into sex by a member of the clergy. That’ll ruin his career and you can run away during the hubbub.”

Emily scoffs. “It’s your word against his. They’re not going to believe a gypsy over the archdeacon of Notre Dame.”

“Besides,” Connor says, unexpectedly, “who’s to say he won’t kill you anyway for spreading slander or whatever?”

Of all people to butt in on the conversation, Connor is not Evan’s first prediction.

“I mean, having sex with an old dude, however bad that may be, wouldn’t be as bad as getting burned alive. If you’re lucky you would pass out from smoke inhalation or something.”

One boy frowns. “It’s not about the physical sex. It’s about pride and shit. He tried to rape you in a cathedral, you don’t want to repent in front of everybody and be his sex slave just because you don’t want to die.”

“I appreciate martyrs,” one girl, Evan thinks her name is Luisa, says. “I just would rather not be one of them.”

One girl, with short hair and large glasses that amplify her shy eyes, grins. “I wouldn’t even have a problem because there’s no way Frollo would want to fuck me.” Everyone laughs. “I have too much lesbian energy.”

“Bold of you to assume Esmeralda doesn’t.”

“Let’s assume that we’re physically Esmeralda, just with our own brains.” There’s noises of understanding from the table. “Here’s an idea. What if you agree to have sex with Frollo and then kill him?”

At this moment the waitress comes back. She eyes the group suspiciously. “Are you ready to order?”

Evan’s blood freezes. While they were all talking about priest sex, Evan had entirely forgotten to look at the menu. He’s frantically reading through it when he hears Connor say, “the Early Bird, please. And can I have English muffins instead of toast?”

“Anything for you?” The waitress asks. Connor elbows Evan in the ribs. 

“Oh. Uh…” Evan’s eyes refuse to read any letters on the page. Why can’t he just pick something? Jesus christ, just pick something!

“You can share with me,” Connor offers.

Evan blinks. “Thanks.”

The waitress takes the rest of the orders and leaves. Connor runs his finger around the rim of his water glass, and Evan’s eyes are drawn to the motion. His fingers are really long. Spindly.

“Idea,” Emily says. “She has that dagger with her outfit, right? Just get him where you want him and, you know…” she mimes a stabbing motion. “Then just get the fuck out of there.”

“Why would you be wearing a dagger during sex? Wouldn’t that be suspicious?”

“Maybe it would be during that time before sex when the clothes are still on.”

“It’s a good idea, but she was wearing that white dress at the end, right? She didn’t have her dagger,” Luisa says. “But I think we’re on the right track.”

Jess thinks for a second. “Maybe just snap his neck or something? He seems pretty frail.”

“It takes a lot of force to snap a neck,” Connor says. 

Evan’s eyes are pulled back to Connor. He’s never seen Connor this into a conversation. Even in English he’s always sort of distant. 

“Here’s what you do,” one girl says defiantly. “You make a deal with Quasimodo.”

The table erupts with noise.

“Let me finish! You make a deal with Quasimodo. You get Frollo in a compromising position or something and then you get him to come up from behind and snap his neck. Quasimodo has the strength. Besides, he already killed Frollo, he won’t have qualms about doing it again.”

The conversation lulls. People still chatter, but nobody makes any outstanding points. Evan watches Connor as he listens to other people talk, occasionally sipping at his water. He’s just so… real.

The food comes and it was fair for Connor to offer to share his plate, because the amount of food he was given is huge. The plate is piled high with hash browns, corned beef, and two sunny-side-up eggs, along with two English muffins. Connor immediately picks up his fork and takes a huge bite. “Fuck,” he says reverently. “I’m so fucking hungry.”

Everyone’s quiet as they tuck into their food. Evan picks at the hash browns, watching the teenagers around him scarf down their breakfast like animals. Connor piles everything on a muffin and tops it with an egg, marveling at his creation before taking a big bite. The egg spills yellow yolk all over his chin. 

“Shit,” Connor laughs. “Give me your napkin, Evan.”

Evan obliges, watching Connor wipe the yolk off his chin. He can’t look away. Connor puts the crumpled and wet napkin back in front of Evan, who pushes it back towards Connor with a grimace. “You can keep it.”

“What would you do, Evan? If you were Esmeralda?” 

He says this loudly enough so that the entire table hears and turns their eyes toward him. Evan swallows thickly. “I, uh… I’d take the sex.”

Emily nods. “Valid, but how would you get away?”

“Oh. I, uh, I hadn’t thought of that.”

Connor grins wolfishly. “C’mon. Dig into the deepest recesses of your heart. What would you do?”

Everyone’s staring at Evan. They expect an answer. No, they expect a good answer.

“I’d, uh…” Evan looks back at Connor. There’s food stuck between his teeth. “I’d convince Frollo to have a threesome with me and Clopin and then, using our combined strength, we could bring him down.”

The table explodes with noise. 

“A threesome?” One girl shrieks.

“Who the fuck is Clopin?” Asks Connor.

The waitress, who’s delivering pancakes to a family sitting across the room, shoots them a dirty look. 

The girl who started the conversation rolls her eyes. “He’s the king of the gy-”

“I’m going to have to ask you all to keep it down,” the waitress says. “This is a family establishment.”

Everyone looks at their plates in shame. 

“Sorry,” Emily says. “We’ll be quieter.”

As soon as the waitress leaves, everyone positively loses their shit, but contain themselves to repressed giggles.

“Hey,” one girl whispers. “What about Captain Phoebus?”

Connor’s face is beet red with stifled laughter.

Evan’s face is hot too and he can hear the world around him melt away. His ears refuse to hear and he doesn’t care, because no one is saying anything of note and right next to him Connor is real and alive and his eyes are alight with humor and life.

Through Evan’s watery perception of the world Evan can hear someone talking about the New York trip. 

Every two years, the music program goes on a trip to New York City to participate in the Festivals of Music competition. It’s a big thing and almost everyone goes. Unlike the hookup-ridden sports trip to Montreal, the New York trip’s chaos is an entirely different one; two years ago, someone kept banging on people’s hotel room doors in the middle of the night. Alison Beasley swears she heard a creepy guy say “little girls, come out,” but that’s even more unlikely than the rumor that Kenneth Cole and Jake Leiman made out in their hotel room. 

It’s not like Evan would know. He wasn’t even there.

“Y’all are going, right?” Someone says, and everyone whoops. 

Evan knows he’s not going. His mom can’t afford it.

There are ways to get a little bit of financial help for the trips, but Evan would never have the guts to go up to his director and ask. 

Everyone starts blabbing on and on about roommate assignments and the songs they’re singing and Evan can’t help but shrink into himself because he just knows that he isn’t a part of this, and he never will be. 

“Hey,” Connor says to Evan, his voice breaking through the murk. “Who do you want to room with?”

“Oh,” Evan says, pretending that he’s definitely going, “probably Jared?”

For one second Connor’s expression falters. Evan could read novels into that second.

“Cool.” Connor lifts his empty water glass to his lips. “He’s in band, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Isn’t the band teacher, like, crazy?”

“Marge?” Someone on the other side of Evan exclaims. “Marge is my spirit animal!”

“Yeah, but like, didn’t she put an orange in someone’s tuba once?”

“Uh, it was a clementine in a trombone, first of all. And it was a prank that Danny did. Marge wasn’t a part of it.”

Evan isn’t a big fan of Marge MacLauren. One time she yelled at a group of kids talking really loudly in the hallway outside of the band room and even just being in proximity of that made Evan cry. But all the band kids seem to love her.

And Evan’s out of the loop like always.

Evan gets his mom to drive him home once they get the check. He feels guilty about not paying, but Connor assures him that since they split, it’s only fair. Evan doesn’t really think that makes a lot of sense, but he’s not about to argue. 

Especially not when Connor’s arm is casually draped across the back of Evan’s chair, almost like they’re real friends hanging out, sharing food, and talking about stupid things like having sex with Disney villains.

When Evan’s mom asks if he had fun, Evan says yes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You asked, I delivered: All (most of) the songs mentioned!
> 
> \- The Parting Glass / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUK-8M3Vhzc  
> \- Dh’èirich mi moch madainn cheòthar / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZEhc3j2t8I  
> \- As I roved out / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC4uTJpmEIE  
> \- A Phiuthrag ’s a Phiuthar / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVZYBj2_-1A  
> \- Bring me a little water sylvie / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY3XxnRtu48  
> \- Super trouper / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHPrbfng_Nw  
> \- All I really want / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLHvb9V8Yzs  
> \- La Nuit / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vel-9_wA_WQ  
> \- Make me feel / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmH3ejHT6oo  
> \- Country roads / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vrEljMfXYo  
> \- From Eden / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmWbBUxSNUU  
> \- God is a woman / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEA5LTq0b3E
> 
> hopefully all those links work  
> merry chrysler to those who celebrate  
> my mom's making yorkshire pudding i;m hype  
> i appreciate everyone's concern over my project, it's turned in, i'm waiting for a grade


	25. my poor old head is a-reeling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i'm back on my bullshit

The week before winter break is always a mess of tests and projects and makeup assignments, and Evan’s just struggling to keep his head over the water. He stayed up until 2 am on Wednesday trying to complete his history project outline due at 7:30 that morning and passed Wednesday in a fog because of this, which proved to be fatal when Evan’s English teacher announced a pop quiz on the chapters of Frankenstein that Evan did not have the time to read.

It’s Thursday and Evan’s not having a good time.

He definitely failed his Spanish test, and if he gets anything below a B, his grade is going to drop to a C-, which is basically an F. 

In physics class they played this weird physics board game and somehow Evan was put in charge of mapping his team’s trajectory and he fucked up the measurements on the first round, sending them off to the edge of the board, pretty much fucking the team into the ground on the first move. One girl kept screaming that they needed to collaborate and Evan tried, he really did, but everyone else kept saying stuff that Evan didn’t understand and the time would run out and Evan would have to write something down, no matter whether it was the smartest move or not. 

He didn’t see Connor in homeroom because he was too busy crying in the bathroom over his math grade.

In English they’re doing Poetry Out Loud, which Evan completely forgot about. The judge is there and everyone else before him is reciting their poems flawlessly and Evan definitely didn’t memorize his poem. 

He gets up to recite his weird-ass poem about an old farmhouse and he stutters on every word and has to call for his next line four times and every time you have to ask for a line that’s an automatic three points deducted. Everyone’s staring at him and they’re judging him for not having his poem memorized and for leaning on the podium and the judge is furiously writing in her notebook and at the end of the poem, everybody snaps politely and Evan runs to the bathroom for the second time to have a panic attack so bad he throws up. 

Evan doesn’t want to take his chances with lunch, so he goes to the nurse’s office instead. 

They’ll feed him dry cornflakes anyway.

 

~

 

Evan goes to Jared’s house after school to A) study for their physics midterm and B) fuck around online and waste time until they’re both more stressed than they were at the beginning. Jared plays some game where everyone talks in a Russian accent and Evan just watches. He’s never been good at shooter games. 

Jared’s player is in a handcar with some other guys in the game when a bunch of monsters come down and grab the guy opposite of Jared, yanking out of the car, never to be seen again. 

“Boris! No!” Jared yells, mostly as a joke. 

Evan just feels bad for Boris.

He leaves to pee and as he’s in the bathroom Evan somehow can’t help but feel sad for Boris. He’s a random video game character that Evan saw for two scenes but there’s that full-body sadness that can only come with the death of someone close to your heart.

Evan comes back in and Jared looks up and laughs. “Damn,” he says, “who died?”

Evan dives directly into his work when he get home. He’s definitely going to bomb his physics test if he doesn’t study, and he needs to keep his physics grade up to keep his GPA from slipping. Jared mocks Evan for caring so much about his GPA, but really, the GPA is what colleges look at and if it’s too low it doesn’t matter how good your essay is or how many extracurriculars you did because the GPA is a sign of how hard you worked and how well you did and if it’s too low, colleges know you’re a slacker who’s not worth it.

Dr. Sherman says Evan catastrophizes and Evan’s inclined to agree with him. 

Evan’s stuck on this one physics problem that he’s been working on for fifteen minutes. In a sudden burst of pure, undirected rage, Evan throws his physics book across the room and buries his head in his arms. He’s going to fucking fail physics. 

“I get angry a lot,” a voice from behind Evan says, “and I usually don’t even know why.”

Evan screams and turns around and there’s Connor on his bed. It’s a fake Connor, Evan thinks. But the thing is, this Connor is so realistic that Evan can barely tell. He tries to look at Connor’s eyes, trying to see those telltale dead whites and two-dimensional pupils but Connor’s eyes are shielded by hair and shadow and Evan can’t help but notice how this Connor’s hands are fidgeting in a very un-ghost-like fashion. 

“This one time,” Connor says, completely unfazed by Evan’s scream, “I got really mad because I was doing the dishes and they weren’t stacking the way I wanted them to and I just… ugh.”

Evan opens his mouth to say something but no words come out.

“And it fucked my mood for the rest of the evening and my mom called me in to help clear the table and I think she could tell I was pissed off because she had asked if I was okay that I had to help while Zoe and Larry were fucking around and she kept calling me fucking Connie, and I hate that nickname, but, you know, I had to say it was fine.”

“Are you real?” Evan asks.

Connor ignores him. “And she did something stupid, like drop something or whatever, because she’s my mom, and she was laughing and when she looked at me I laughed because that’s what I was supposed to do.”

Evan’s gut twists in that sadness that engulfs the entire body, that heartache Evan felt earlier for Boris. Connor’s words fall out of his mouth in a very Evan-y way and it makes Evan feel sorry for him because he knows exactly how that feels.

“But it wasn’t funny.”

“Are you real?” Evan asks again, because he needs to know.

“I don’t fucking know.” Connor stands up and walks over to Evan’s dresser, picking up a picture frame. “You were in that book club, right? In elementary school?”

Evan nods.

“With Ms. Rouse?”

Evan nods again.

“That was fucking lit, man.” Connor sets down the picture frame. “We had to bring snacks relating to the book every month, and one month Caroline chose The Candymakers just so we could eat candy.”

Evan laughs. “I remember that.”

“What book did I choose?”

“Oh! It was… uh…”

Connor snaps his fingers. “Between Shades of Grey.”

“Yeah…” Evan says. “World War Two.”

“That books was fucking heavy for elementary school.”

“I, um, your mom brought bread and we each had a ration of, like, 50 grams.” Evan grins at the memory. “She used a scale and everything.”

“I don’t remember that.” Connor furrows his brow. “Why don’t I remember that?”

Evan frowns. “It doesn’t matter.”

“What year is it?” Connor asks.

“2018.”

Connor nods slowly. “Time flies.”

“Yeah.”

“I died in 2015, didn’t I? April 7, 2015.”

“No,” Evan says, even though he doesn’t really believe what he’s saying. “You’re not dead.”

“I’m not?” Connor asks, just as shocked as if someone told him his name wasn’t Connor.

“No,” Evan answers. It feels good to say that so affirmatively. 

Connor Murphy isn’t dead.

At least not yet.

“Oh.”

“Why are you here?” Evan attempts.

“I think the only reason my parents think I changed when I got older was because I stop hiding it.” Connor’s back to ignoring Evan. “I was always angry. I just used to say I was fine and as I got older I just… didn’t. I stopped giving a shit.”

“Oh,” Evan says.

Connor picks up the picture frame again. “I think Zoe gets angry too. But she doesn’t show it.”

Evan tries to swallow the thick lump forming in his throat.

“I wish I was like Zoe.” Connor runs his fingers around the edge of the picture. “She’s happy.”

Evan can’t do anything but stare.

With zero warning Connor flings the picture frame to the ground, sending glass shards flying everywhere. Evan tries to quell his racing heart and picks up his socked feet. 

“I wish I was fucking happy!” Connor screams at the glass on the floor. 

The lump expands and Evan has to pull at the skin of his neck to breathe. He’s starting to feel a little lightheaded.

Connor sinks to the floor and picks up a piece of glass, passing it between his fingers. Evan can see little droplets of blood start to bloom on his skin. “Time fucking flies,” Connor says.

When was the last time Evan thought about that book club? 

“Take care of her, will you?” 

Evan coughs. “What?”

“Zoe. She’s… you need to make sure she’s happy.”

“Why can’t you?” Evan asks, unwisely.

Connor scoffs like Evan just asked him why the sky was blue. “You’re dating her.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Oh.” Connor stands up and brushes off his pants. “I’ll help you clean that up.”

Before Evan can say anything he’s gone out the door, with no footsteps to tell where he’s gone. Evan waits for Connor to come back but he never does.

When Evan goes downstairs to get a broom, the house is empty.

Evan realizes he never saw Connor’s eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's actually thursday lmao  
> are y'all on break? i am and it's great  
> i can't remember the last vegetable i ate  
> everything in these last few chapters (book club, boris, priest sex) is all drawn from real life  
> comment so i don't get scurvy


	26. how could we be such fools?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys almost hang out. Almost.

It’s 11 pm and Evan’s awake. His room is dark and only lit by the blue light of his laptop screen. It kind of gives Evan a headache but he doesn’t care because he’s a man on a mission.

Evan shoves a handful of pretzels in his mouth and types into the google search bar, “how to help a ghost with unfinished business.”

It’s time to get some answers.

The first result is from a science site called “How Stuff Works” and although Evan does believe in science, he doesn’t think it’s going to help him much. There’s something interesting about theories of poltergeists being energy given off by angry or frustrated people. It says that adolescents going through puberty are often the target of poltergeist activity. 

It’s an interesting theory. Connor’s angry, that’s for sure. And especially with what he said last night… it’s definitely something. 

However, a quick google search reveals that poltergeists usually manifest in things like loud noises and things flying around.

Another site, “Why Do Some Spirits Stay Earthbound?” says that some spirits remain at the place of their death and are often confused or don’t know that they’ve died. It’s interesting to consider, especially since Connor seems to think that he died three years ago.

There are lots of interesting ideas, like guilt on behalf of a suicide and a living person who’s unwilling to let go.

Some guy who was on a TV show (the Ghost Whisperer? Evan had never heard of it) says that ghosts often don’t want to believe they’re dead or they can’t leave a loved one who needs them. 

This gets stuck on the fact that ghost Connor doesn’t seem to want to believe he’s alive. 

Evan watches the Sixth Sense and he can’t stop thinking about when they helped the little girl who was murdered by her mother. Is that what he needs to do? Go to Connor’s house and find some sort of unfinished business? Or is the unfinished business at his house? 

Evan remembers when he watched the Sixth Sense for the first time with his mom. It’s a great movie, but it’s such a painful one to watch. There’s so much agony trapped within the confines of the screen, and both Evan and his mom were crying hideously by the end, even if Heidi had seen it in theaters when it first came out. 

Does Connor have unfinished business?

If so, what’s stopping his real-life counterpart from fixing it on earth?

Evan contents himself to a long night of googling.

 

~

 

The day before break is always somewhat liminal.

Everyone’s wearing ugly Christmas sweaters, save for a choice few without ugly sweaters of their own. Josh Kaufman is wearing a hat with a menorah on it. Tillie from Spanish class has a sweater that says “here comes santa floss” with a picture of a giant tooth on it. 

The guitar class goes class to class, playing seasonal music and interrupting everyone’s tests. Also in Spanish class, some girl gets up and does the Jingle Bell Rock dance from Mean Girls in the middle of class. They’re writing holiday cards to each other and Evan gets some girl named Caroline who he doesn’t really know, so he just makes a simple card with stupid looking snowflakes and writes “feliz navidad” a little too small in the middle. 

At lunch, a boy Evan doesn’t recognize in a varsity jacket stands on the table as all his friends drum their hands on the table. The cafeteria quiets a little, and the boy makes an announcement about coming to the football game that night. The football players cheer; nobody else does. It’s a kind of stupid announcement, and everyone’s going anyway. 

Not Evan.

Connor isn’t in English class. It’s weird and quiet without him. 

Evan never really realized how present Connor is in class. 

They’re handing out new books to read and there’s going to be a reading test on the first few chapters on the first day back from break. 

So Connor’s pretty much screwed without his book. 

When the teacher asks if anyone could deliver the book to Connor after school (he discloses that Connor’s mom called him in sick this morning with a fever), Evan tentatively raises his hand. He figures, even if he can’t get to Connor, there’s a good chance he can give the book to Zoe to give to Connor. 

Evan tucks the book at the bottom of his bag and makes a plan. 

Here’s what he’s figured out: Zoe has jazz band rehearsals on Fridays from 2:40 to 4:00. If Evan can find Zoe in the band room, he can drop it off with her before rehearsal starts.

As soon as the bell rings, Evan is a man on a mission. 

The band room’s on the floor below Evan’s English class, so he has to brave the staircases that are jam-packed with rowdy teenagers eager to get home. Someone throws their backpack down the stairs, narrowly missing Evan’s head but not missing someone else, and yells, “YEET!”

It looks like the guy who did get hit is a friend of the thrower, so it’s all good. 

Evan makes it to the music hallway with minimal damage. 

Zoe’s at her locker, getting her guitar case out. Evan pulls the book from his bag and braces himself for awkwardness.

Luckily, Zoe turns around first. “Hey, Evan,” she says casually. “What’s up?”

“Uh… Connor’s out sick, right?”

Zoe cocks her head to the side. “Yeah?”

“Mr. Flagston told me to give him this book?” Evan holds the book at arm’s length. Zoe doesn’t take it. “I figured you could give it to him after rehearsal?”

“I don’t have rehearsal today. I’m just getting my stuff so I can practice over break.”

Evan frowns. “Can you still give it to him?”

Zoe takes a deep breath, like she’s getting ready to do something she’ll regret. “Why don’t you?”

“I, uh… you live in the same house?”

Zoe cracks a smile. “I can drive you over.”

“I don’t want to-to be a bother.”

“Nah, it’s no biggie.” Zoe shrugs.

“Oh.” It’s not like Evan has anything else to do. “Okay.”

The parking lot is an absolute mess. There are a hundred cars all trying to get out and one haggard crossing guard doing his best.

It’s only twenty degrees out but the inside of the car is sweaty and warm. Zoe has one hand on the wheel and her head leaning against the window. They sit in silence for too long.

Eventually, thankfully, Zoe turns on the radio. It’s some crappy alternative station that Zoe wrinkles her nose at but doesn’t change. 

The Murphys’ street is lined with tastefully decorated houses. Everyone seems to have embraced the Boston tradition of putting candles in every window. Evan’s pretty sure he read somewhere that it was something Irish Catholics did when they were being persecuted, but he’s not sure. 

The houses with trees out front make up for the missing greenery by stringing the branches with Christmas lights, which must’ve taken forever to do (and would’ve been pretty cold). Some people have those figures, like those little reindeer made out of lights. 

The Murphys have very minimal decorations outside their house. They have white lights draped over their front and side door and a little wooden Rudolph on their stoop. 

As Evan gets out of the car he sees a wooden sign of a Santa in their garden. 

Evan forgot gloves and his fingers are freezing stiff around the paper of the book in his hands. 

The Murphys have a nice wreath on their door with little berries and a red gingham bow on the bottom. Zoe absentmindedly straightens the bow and pushes open the door. 

Inside, it’s like Christmas exploded on the house. Just in the front entranceway, there’s a cabinet filled entirely with nutcrackers. 

Zoe drops her bag in the little white cubby by the door. “I don’t know where Connor is. I’m sure you’ll find him.”

With that, she leaves Evan standing in the middle of the doorway.

Evan nervously puts his bag down next to Zoe’s. Where’s he supposed to go? He’s only ever been in the house once, and god knows where Connor is. What if he’s in the bathroom and Evan just ends up wandering aimlessly around the house?

There’s the sounds of movement from around the corner. A fridge opening and silverware clacking. 

Evan follows the noise. 

There’s so much Christmas stuff in the house.

Evan finds Connor in the kitchen with the sound of music. 

Connor’s sitting at his kitchen island eating pumpkin pie directly out of the pan. He’s got a song playing out of his laptop. It’s country, but the kind of country that’s deep and thick with folk and tradition. Connor’s eyes are closed and he’s mouthing along the words with the women singing and it’s kind of gross, because his mouth’s full of pumpkin pie. 

With a fork in hand, Connor starts to dance in his seat. He dances with his arms, swaying to the beat and bobbing his head to the rhythm, lifting both arms as if to pray. It’s like he’s trying to swim through the air but he’s just moving to the music and Evan doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything more beautiful in his life.

There’s one thing certain, and it’s that Connor Murphy is not sick. 

The song ends and the three women are laughing and drinking beer and Evan can see from his angle that Connor’s smiling like he’s there with them.

“Connor?”

Connor whips around, his eyes meeting Evan’s with surprise. 

“What are you doing here?”

“I, uh, we got a new book for English, and we have a reading test when we get back? So Mr. Flagston asked if I could give it to you.” 

Connor narrows his eyes. “Why didn’t you just get Zoe to do it?”

Evan laughs awkwardly. “I tried?”

“Huh.”

“Mr. Flagston said you were sick?”

Connor shrugs. “Yeah, that’s what my mom said.”

“Are you… not sick?”

“Nah.” Connor scratches at his neck, and Evan notices the red marks already disrupting the skin. “I watched Bandersnatch and flipped my lid.”

Evan squints in confusion. “What?”

“Netflix thing? The new Black Mirror thing?” Connor gauges for a reaction in Evan, and when he gets none, shrugs. “Whatever. I got mad at Larry and they thought I was going to fucking murder him or something. So… I get a trip to the therapist and the day off.”

“Doesn’t sound too bad.”

“It wasn’t.”

They stand in silence for a few seconds. Evan holds out the book for Connor, and he takes it.

Connor flips to the front page. “Dorian Gray. Cool.”

“We have a reading test on the first three chapters on Monday.”

“Cool.”

“Yep.”

“Do you want some pumpkin pie?”

“Oh. Uh- no.” Evan never likes to eat someone else’s food. It always feels like he’s overstepping his boundaries.

Connor looks down at the pie. “Okay.”

Shit. How’s Evan supposed to get home?

“I need your help,” Connor says suddenly, pulling an old-looking cookbook from under a stack of newspapers. One page is tabbed with a post-it note, and Connor opens right to it, shoving the open page in Evan’s face. “Which cookies should I make?”

“Uh… what?”

“For Christmas.” Connor turns the book back around. “I’m thinking either the spice cookies or the brown sugar cookies.”

“Um…”

“You’re right, I’ll probably do both.” Connor runs his finger down the page. “Do you have a ride home?”

“No?” 

Connor opens his mouth, probably to offer to drive him, and Evan cuts him off short by blurting, “I’ll probably walk.”

“Walk?” Connor says, raising an eyebrow. “It’s, like, ten degrees out.”

“I like walking in the winter,” Evan declares. He’s not technically lying. He does like walking in the winter, where the air is crisp and there’s frost on the ground. Not, however, when it’s slushy and gray and cars will whip past and shower Evan with gutter water. “It’s… refreshing?”

“Okay,” Connor says, like he doesn’t quite believe it. “Thanks for the book.”

There are a million places Evan would rather be than the Murphys’ kitchen, facing Connor’s cool detachment. 

Evan doesn’t want to just… leave, and god knows he’d never admit that he wanted to go. 

Luckily, Connor’s crass and mean and thankfully hopeless at social cues because he says, “what are you still doing here?”

Evan can’t help the rush of relief that sweeps through him. “Uh…”

The moment is broken by Mrs. Murphy coming into the kitchen, humming brightly. When she sees Evan, her worn face is split by a smile. “Hello! You’re Connor’s friend, right? I’m sorry, I don’t quite remember your name.”

“Oh, uh- Evan.”

Mrs. Murphy nods. “Evan. That’s right. What brings you to our kitchen today, Evan?”

“I was giving Connor his book for English?”

“That’s sweet.” Mrs. Murphy pulls open the fridge and pulls out a carton of orange juice. “Would you like to stay for dinner? We’re having lasagne.”

“Vegan lasagne,” Connor counters.

Mrs. Murphy opens a cabinet and grabs a glass with a little Christmas tree on it. “Vegan lasagne is still lasagne, Connie. It’s in the name.”

While his mom’s back is turned, Connor makes a face at Evan. 

“Well? What about dinner?”

Evan coughs awkwardly. “Um. My mom’s probably e-expecting me for dinner, so…”

This is a lie. Heidi won’t be home at all, she’s going straight to class from work. 

“Some other time, then.” Mrs. Murphy sets down the glass on the counter with a rattle. “Why don’t you stay and help Connor bake our Christmas cookies? What cookies did you choose, honey?”

“Both,” Connor murmurs.

“The more, the merrier!” She says. “Want to help? I know Connor likes having an extra pair of hands around the kitchen.”

“No, I don’t. You and I both know I throw things.” Connor looks like he might actually be on the verge of murdering his mother with an ashtray. “Why do you keep trying to make him stay? You sound like you’re recruiting for a cult.”

“You do have your father’s temper in the kitchen,” Mrs. Murphy says with a laugh. She pours her orange juice, and Evan can’t help notice her hands shaking. 

Connor snorts almost silently. “Just the kitchen?” He turns to face Evan. “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”

Evan would like to stay. He’d like to stay if Connor was the nice Connor, the one who makes stupid jokes and knows facts about pirates and hates dances. But Evan has a feeling he doesn’t really want to stick around for too much longer. “I’d, uh, better get going. Sorry.”

“Yeah. Thanks for my book.”

Evan waves sadly and smiles at Mrs. Murphy. “Bye. Happy holidays.”

“Happy holidays, Evan!” She says.

Connor just smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> every writing site ever: what's keeping your characters apart?  
> me: THEY'RE TOO AWKWARD MARGARET
> 
> merry new year  
> no better way to ring in the new year than with severe cramps + vomiting (tmi sorry)  
> how's y'all's holiday season going? 
> 
> comment blease  
> oh oh oh the song Connor's dancing to is this  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de4bBIBrabw


	27. and through the night, behind the wheel, the mileage clicking west

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evan has a dad?? whaaaaaat

On the first night of winter break Evan’s mom springs it on him that they’re going to Colorado for the holidays.

Apparently Evan’s dad wanted to spend time with Evan for Christmas and Heidi was not about to ship her son off to her estranged father with no prior warning. So over crock pot chili Heidi announces that they’ll be leaving in two days to drive to Breckenridge, Colorado and stay with Evan’s dad for the week. 

Normally Evan would freak out about this, but it’s not like he had any other plans over the break.

What does keep him up that night is his dad. 

How do you spend a week with someone you haven’t seen for six years? What do you call them? He’s definitely not going to call him ‘dad’, and it would be weird to call him Charles like an adult. Besides, would they even get along? The last time Evan saw him, he was twelve. Now, he’s legally an adult and likes weird Netflix shows and once had a crush on a boy. 

Plus, he has step-siblings. If he remembers correctly, they’re a few years younger than him. Evan’s terrible with kids; what if he has to hang out with them? 

Oh god, what if he has to make small talk with grown ups?

Evan mulls over all of this in the car. The only thing that makes him not feel guilty about spoiling his mom’s car ride is that she looks just as troubled as he feels. 

It’s not snowy in Massachusetts yet. It snowed once, but it didn’t quite stick, so it was mostly just cold and rainy. But as they drive west it gets drier and snowier until Evan can see fat flakes falling from the sky. Something primal in him wants to get out of the car and stick his tongue out to catch them as they fall. 

His dad’s house is a modest manufactured home in the outskirts of a little skiing village. 

Before they leave the car, Heidi hugs Evan tightly. “You’re the best son anyone could ask for,” she tells him.

Evan feels curls of guilt inside his gut. 

The house has rainbow Christmas lights strung up along the gutters, and they gleam in the dim twilight. 

Evan realizes his sneakers are not at all suitable for the snow. 

Everyone’s waiting for them as they come in the door, and Evan’s immediately wrapped up in a huge bear hug from his father.

“Hey, kiddo!” He exclaims, as if Evan’s a kid at a t-ball game who just scored the winning shot. 

There’s a woman Evan doesn’t recognize who also offers a hug. “I’m Olivia,” she says. “Charles’ wife. I don’t think we’ve met.”

Evan smiles awkwardly. “I’m Evan.”

“I know!” Olivia says with a laugh. 

“Come in!” Evan’s dad says. “The kids are in the TV room.”

As if Evan isn’t his kid.

There are three kids in the TV room, all watching some Christmas movie. One looks about Evan’s age, with wispy blonde hair that falls around her face like a mane. She looks like a deer in the headlights when she sees Evan, and he feels like she might know exactly how he feels. There are two that are littler, a girl and a boy, maybe late elementary school, both with Evan’s dad’s black hair. They seem positively indifferent to the whole situation.

“This is Catherine,” Olivia says. “She’s a freshman in high school, so you two aren’t too far apart. And those two are Taylor and Aaron. Taylor’s in sixth grade and Aaron’s in fourth.”

“Hi,” Evan offers. “I’m Evan?”

Only Catherine lifts her hand in meager greeting. 

“Charles has steak on the grill!” Olivia interjects, even if just to diffuse the tension. “Are you guys hungry?”

Before Evan can mumble a no, Heidi says, “we’d love that.”

So they’re ushered into another room, where an unnecessarily ornamental chandelier hangs over the table. The kids immediately take seats. Olivia assures Evan and Heidi that they can sit wherever they want, and they sit at the end of the table next to each other. Catherine looks very interested in her water glass.

“So!” Olivia says, bringing in an enormous bowl of salad. “How’s everyone?”

Heidi looks like she regrets everything. “We’re doing just great.”

“That’s wonderful! We’re just peachy up here as well. You know, Catherine just went to senior districts. She was the only soprano they took from Sycamore High.”

“Um, are you a singer?” Evan asks, just to stir up a little conversation.

Catherine shrugs. “Yeah.”

“She’s very good!” Olivia protests. “She’s just shy. I could show you a video from her voice recital.”

Catherine scowls at her plate. Heidi grins painfully. “Maybe after dinner.”

Evan’s dad comes in laden with a plate of strip steak and sets it down with a thud. 

Everyone takes each other’s hands. Evan’s hands are very sweaty but it doesn’t seem like he has much of a choice so he grabs Taylor’s hand and hopes he doesn’t look as helpless as he feels.

“Gracious God,” he begins. 

Fuck, Evan thinks.

Apparently in a few years his dad got very religious.

“We thank you for this blessed day. Thank you for family and friends and that Evan and Heidi were able to get here safely, and give them a safe trip back. Please help us appreciate your glory in this Christmas season and not get swept up in the presents and decorations. Please help all the people living in peril get what they need to be happy and healthy. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.”

The rest of the table mumbles a halfhearted “amen.”

“You remember we’re Jewish, right, Charles?” Heidi says.

He laughs nervously. “You were never that religious.”

Heidi just rolls her eyes. 

Olivia smiles. “Well, regardless of the man in the sky, the sentiment is true. We’re happy you’re here.”

Heidi doesn’t respond and Evan knows she doesn’t want to.

The dinner is like that, tense and awkward.

After dinner, Olivia offers to play a board game, but thankfully Heidi wisely says, “we’re pretty tired. We should probably head to bed.”

So Evan is shuttled into the basement, where there’s a fold-out couch waiting for him. 

“If you want to watch the TV at all, feel free. Just keep it at a reasonable volume.” Evan’s dad gestures to the door in the corner. “In there’s the laundry room, so if there are any noises it’s probably the boiler. Not a monster or anything.”

He laughs. Evan tries to smile. At least the ghosts can’t find him here. If there’s anything comforting about this painful vacation, it’s that he’s finally free of Connor Murphy.

Evan can’t sleep for a long time. It’s always weird adjusting to new locations, and light from the street comes filtering in through the snow through the small windows up by the ceiling. It would be pretty if it wasn’t so annoying. The boiler thunks periodically, which startles Evan every time. The bed is lumpy and he’s just slightly cold and it’s that place where he’s just uncomfortable enough to not be able to sleep.

Eventually, though, his body wins and Evan finds himself waking up the next morning with no recollection of ever falling asleep. 

There are sounds of cooking coming from the kitchen and Evan drags himself out of bed, pulls on a sweatshirt (it’s still really cold! Is it usually this cold in Colorado?) and stumbles upstairs.

Olivia’s standing over a skillet and flipping pancakes with ease. There’s old punk music being played really softly over the speaker by the coffee pot.

For the first time Evan realizes that in an alternate universe, Olivia could be his mom. That Heidi would be an estranged relative and he would live in Colorado, where he would probably learn to ski and smoke weed and have to wear a heavy jacket around the house at all times. Not like Massachusetts is any warmer, but he’s used to the weather there. There’s nothing in Colorado he’s used to.

Olivia turns around and smiles like Jesus just walked through the door. “Evan! Good morning!”

“Morning.”

“I’m making pancakes. They’ll be done in a bit.” She looks back down to the skillet. “Do you want something? Coffee? Milk? I have orange juice. Can you drink? I could make mimosas.”

“Uh, no thanks.” Evan sinks into the stool at the foot of the kitchen island. “I’m only eighteen.”

“Well, everything’s in the fridge if you want anything.”

Evan is absolutely not going to so much as look at the fridge.

Everyone sleeps in except for Evan, Olivia, and Catherine, so they eat their pancakes in the living room and chat sparingly. 

Catherine’s a soprano 1, Olivia reveals. She’s very good, and she’s considering going for a career in music. Catherine just flushes beet red and pokes her pancakes extra hard.

Olivia asks what Evan’s into and he doesn’t have an answer.

“I-I like music too,” he says eventually. “I’d never be able to do it, but I like… listening to it.”

“What kind of music?” Catherine mumbles.

“I dunno?” Evan thinks. What does he listen to the most? “Like… Irish music? Folk-y stuff?” 

Catherine’s eyes light up. “Really? You know, I started a Traditional Music Ensemble at my school.”

“That’s really cool.”

Catherine grins and ducks her head and Evan’s reminded of Connor’s own bashful pride. “Thanks.”

“I could show you a video of them,” Olivia says, already pulling out her phone. “They’re actually very good. I don’t care how many enemies I make, I like you guys infinitely better than the acapella groups.”

Catherine shrugs. “They’re good too.”

Olivia hands Evan her phone. For a moment it’s just background din until they start to sing.

Evan recognizes it. He recognizes it so much. 

The words, the tune. Even the hand claps. 

Evan doesn’t know where but he knows that a spirit brought that song to him. That fate brought him to this moment, where he’s listening to this song sung by this girl, so full and real, when Evan knows that it was truly meant to be flung into the wind by transparent lips.

Heidi comes downstairs in her leopard-print bathrobe and Evan’s reminded of that alternate universe in which him eating pancakes on the couch with Olivia would be the norm. That Heidi would be the outsider. 

But he’s the outsider. He’s not supposed to be here. He’s supposed to be at home, sleeping in. He’ll get up at ten and go eat Raisin Bran Crunch and it on his computer all day. 

He’s not supposed to be sitting in this living room, with cream couches and kitschy Christmas decorations and a little ferris wheel thing filled with red and green M&Ms. 

“Hi, mom.” 

“Morning, sweetie.” 

Olivia waves. “Good morning! Would you like some pancakes?”

“No thanks,” Heidi says stiffly. “I’m fine.”

Evan feels like crying.

That afternoon, Catherine is tasked with showing Evan around town. They get ice cream, even though it’s way too cold. There’s a cute little park in front of City Hall and they sit on a bench, watching the joggers go by and the teenagers under a tree cause a general ruckus. Catherine plays Evan a song called the Northwest Passage and he almost starts sobbing. Not because the song is so beautiful, though it is, but because he feels like a stew pot of emotion and ruptured hopes and all it takes is a strong bass line to make Evan’s chest drop out. 

Something about the warm harmonies makes him wish for something deep down inside of him. He doesn’t quite know what.

Evan knows, in some hidden culvert of his soul, that he wishes he were sitting with someone other than his shy step-sister. He doesn't quite know who. Just… someone.

That night at dinner they have pot roast and Evan’s dad announces that he’s planning on taking His Family to Christmas Eve mass and if they wanted to come, they were welcome.

Evan doesn’t even flinch when Heidi volunteers him to go. He wouldn’t “love to go,” but he’s not about to fight back. 

They play Sorry after dinner and Evan almost has fun. Not quite, but close. 

He can’t go to sleep that night. The light through the windows is too bright and Evan’s thoughts are too strong.

But it’s fine because when he wakes up, Olivia has pancakes for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woAh it's actually thursday  
> this is what i'm doing instead of writing my model scene >:0c  
> please comment so i'll study
> 
> the northwest passage:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVY8LoM47xI


	28. elle est dans ma tête

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> its chrismn  
> merry chrysler

Evan can’t remember the last time he stepped foot in a church. He’s pretty sure it was New Year’s Eve a few years ago, when there was a concert in one of the churches. But that hardly counts as really going to church. 

But it’s December 24th and Evan’s actually participating in Christianity in his stupid-looking dress clothes. They hand everyone a candle and a pamphlet at the door. The pamphlet is full of page numbers in hymnals and the passages from the Bible that they were going to read.

Evan wouldn’t necessarily say his heart was full of dread, but he wouldn’t say that his heart wasn’t full of it. 

The only thing that eases his mind is that if he does something absurdly stupid, no one around will remember him or recognize him. 

The mass is incredibly boring. The choir sings in Latin and somehow, even though there are only three lines, the song ends up being ten minutes long. 

It’s definitely boring, but nothing horrendously traumatic happens, so Evan considers that a win. It’s kind of terrifying when they turn off all the lights and everyone’s just standing there with their lit candles as the priest talks. Evan’s sure that if he had long hair he would’ve already been up in smoke.

There’s a little get-together thing afterwords, with coffee and bad cookies, where the adults all talk about boring stuff and all the kids wreak havoc among themselves. Evan stands awkwardly in the middle, not quite an adult and not like a child, an outcast in all forms.

Taylor comes over to Evan and pokes his side. “I wanna go home!” she whines. 

So Evan drags her over to her dad and tries to get his attention without actually drawing attention to himself. His dad’s talking to some other dad about the Patriots or something, and Evan’s still clueless when the other man turns around and goes, “Evan!”

“Um.” Who the hell is he? Who is he? Jesus christ! Why can’t he remember one goddamn face?

Then it comes to him. The guidance office. The letter. The crying. “Mr. Murphy!”

Mr. Murphy jovially extends a hand. He seems different than before. “How are you doing?”

Evan awkwardly shakes it. His hands are sweaty. “Good.”

“You up here for the holidays?” 

“Uh, yeah. Me and my mom.”

He smiles. “That’s great. It’s nice to see you. You know, Connor and Zoe talk about you all the time.” 

Evan coughs. “They do?”

“I’ll admit, I don’t always understand it.” He laughs. “I don’t know who Frollo is and I don’t think I want to know.”

Evan’s dad furrows his brow. “Isn’t he the guy from Lord of the Rings?”

Mr. Murphy shrugs. “How long are you around for, Evan?”

“Uh, yeah? We, um, we’re leaving on Thursday.”

“You should come over. All of you, I mean. Have a game night. I know the kids would love to hang out with you.” 

It’s weird to hear Mr. Murphy just being a weird, dorky dad. Not heartbroken, not the receiving end of Connor’s frustrations. 

“Sounds like fun,” Evan’s dad says. “When was the last time we all got to spend quality time together, Larry?”

He thinks for a second. “I think the ski trip last year.”

Evan’s almost ready to convert because by the grace of god Taylor goes, “I wanna go home!”

Charles reaches down and ruffles her hair. “Okay, I think it’s best we get going. How about we swing by on Tuesday? Make a day of it?”

From behind Evan’s shoulder comes an all-too familiar voice. “Where are we going tomorrow? You know I’ll be in my pajamas.”

Evan turns around and there’s Connor, with his hair brushed and fluffy, in a button-down shirt and dress pants. 

“Connor,” Evan says, exactly as Connor says, “Evan?”

“Hi,” Evan says. Theoretically, if Mr. Murphy was here, his kids would be too, but the last thing Evan expected to see in church is Connor Murphy, wearing a tie with little Santas on it. 

“What are you doing here?”

Evan jabs a thumb behind him. “My dad.” 

“Yeah, I mean, like, in a church. Aren’t you Jewish?” Connor tugs at his collar and Evan realizes he’s never really seen him wearing anything other than jeans and poorly fitting t-shirts and flannels. 

Evan laughs awkwardly. “Oh. Uh… just wanted to get the full Christmas experience, right?”

Connor’s lip curls in a way that could almost be considered a smile. “Dope.”

“Evan and the Harrises are going to come over on Tuesday to play board games.” Mr. Murphy butts in. “You’ll actually have to get up before noon for once.”

“It’s the day after Christmas!” Connor whines petulantly. “You can’t get me out of my pajamas.”

Mr. Murphy sighs. “That’s a battle for your mother. Find Zoe, please. We should get going.”

Connor turns an about-face and disappears down a hallway that Evan hadn’t noticed before. 

Evan’s dad nudges his daughter. “Taylor, go get your brother. It’s past your bedtime.”

Taylor goes skipping off, vanishing into the church like Connor did. 

Evan didn’t know Connor could clean up, much less clean up well. 

But he looks much better in dress pants than in sweatpants.

When they get home, Evan’s dad stays with his family in the living room to exchange ornaments, while Evan and Heidi go to the basement for their own Christmas ritual, watching (and singing along to) Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

It’s nice, and Evan always loves his traditions with his mom. But it does hurt to be exiled to the basement while his other family relishes such picket-fence traditions that Evan never had. 

He actually sleeps that night. It’s late, and Evan is just tired. He wouldn’t say that visions of sugarplums dance in his head, but it seems that as soon as his head hits the pillow the world begins to fade into darkened bliss. 

 

~

 

On Tuesday, after lunch, everyone gets out of their pajamas and gets ready to actually interact with humans. Evan’s hair is still kind of greasy and his jeans feel a little too tight after wearing sweatpants for days. He’s got a sweater with a pine tree on it that looks kind of Christmassy, so he pulls that on. It’s a struggle to get everyone wrangled, but they all end up in their respective cars, following the GPS to the Murphys’ house.

Their house (apparently they have a second house for when they go to Colorado to ski, Connor told Evan over text the previous night. Apparently they ski a lot.) is a large wooden ski house that tries too hard to look rustic, with a sloping triangular roof and a large porch balcony that’s currently covered in snow. There’s an enormous window that takes up the entire back of the house and a little shed five feet from the house filled to the brim with firewood. It’s cute, and Evan wishes they could have something like that. A nice house to escape to and do some menial activity like skiing.

Zoe greets them at the door and seems mildly surprised. “You never told me you were related to the Harrises,” she says. 

“Yep.”

“Cool.” Zoe opens the door fully. “Come in.”

The inside of the house is pretty much the polar opposite of the Murphys’ house back home. It’s warm and rustic and colorful and full of cluttered decorations. They’re ushered into the living room, where the walls are all wood and there’s a huge stone fireplace on one wall. The couches are red and there’s a wooden canoe hanging from the rafters.

There are patchwork quilts on every surface and a window with a little sitting nook looking out into the woods. The walls are covered with kitschy signs about skiing and winter and drinking wine. 

Connor comes in holding a platter of cheese and almost drops it when he sees them standing there. He plunks down the platter on the coffee table and, seeing the smoldering fire, whispers a concise “fuck.”

“Fuck!” Aaron gleefully mimics. Evan’s dad swats him. 

Connor crouches down in front of the fire and goes about trying to relight it and Evan notices that he’s indeed still in his pajamas, the pants of which are blue and have narwhals on them. When he stands up, clutching his back like an old man, Evan can see his shirt, an old Providence Park Chorus t-shirt with bleach stains covering one sleeve. “Sorry,” he says. “My mom said I would have time to change before you came.”

They stand around while Connor reaches for a cracker and slowly eats it, seemingly unaware of how awkward his lone crunching is. “Sit!” He says. “Eat the cheese. It’s good.” He turns and runs out the room, and they can hear him scream “MOM!” down the hallway. 

Within the minute Mrs. Murphy comes bustling into the living room. “Sorry for my son. We’re a little frenzied today.”

Evan’s dad smiles politely. “No worries.”

“So! How are you all doing?”

“We’re just wonderful,” Olivia says. “How are you? How’s the skiing? We haven’t been able to go up yet.”

“I still can’t ski,” Mrs. Murphy explains. “My back.”

“Still? The accident was months ago!”

“Better safe than sorry, I always say.” 

There’s what sounds like Irish music playing from a speaker somewhere. Connor comes in with Zoe and Connor plunks himself down on the window seat, far from everyone else. “Evan,” he says, patting the cushion next to him. “Sit with me.”

Evan glances over at his mom and his dad and Mrs. Murphy and nobody seems to think anything of anything because in the Murphys’ eyes, he’s Connor’s best friend. At least, that’s what “Connor’s Suicide Note” said. So he gets up and sits with Connor. 

“Every Family is Beautiful But Ours is My Favorite,” the pillow in Connor’s lap reads in curly letters.

Connor draws his legs up and sits criss-cross applesauce on the cushion, hugging the pillow tightly to his chest and twisting his neck to look out the window behind him. 

“So, what game do you want to play?” Mrs. Murphy asks.

“Risk!” Zoe yells. 

“No!” Connor counters. “Risk sucks!”

“We can play teams,” Zoe suggests innocently. 

Mrs. Murphy smiles. “Let’s play Risk. Why not?”

Connor’s teamed up with Evan, and apparently it’s Connor’s job as big brother and Zoe’s job as little sister to mercilessly go after each other. So while the adults squabble over Europe, Connor attacks Zoe’s South America from the North. 

At one point, Evan goes to the bathroom and hanging on the wall are what seems like hundreds of pictures of the Murphy siblings as kids. There’s Connor, with his curly hair and impish smile. Evan can’t stop staring because right in front of him is proof that this isn’t all in his head. 

Little Connor’s eyes seem to follow him as he walks down the hall. 

When he gets back into the living room, Zoe is very aggressively battling her mother over control of Africa. She throws the dice down so hard that all the little players get knocked over, and everyone goes scrambling to put them where they’re supposed to be. Connor’s just sitting there with his knees pulled up to his chest, watching it all unfold. There’s a gleam to his eyes, and maybe it’s just the reflection of the fire, but something within them seems so… pure and real. So human.

“I hate Risk,” Connor whispers to Evan when he sits back down. “It gets boring so fast.”

“Yeah.”

“I dunno. It’s not so bad.” Connor shrugs. He puts his elbow on Evan’s shoulder to prop himself up and even though Evan knows that just something people do, he can’t help but feel as though it’s a breakthrough. 

A breakthrough in what exactly, Evan’s not quite sure.

If there’s one thing going for the Murphys, it’s that they have great cheese. 

Zoe breaks out her guitar and plays those kinds of songs everybody knows and watching Connor emphatically sing along to Take Me Home, Country Roads is so entertaining that Evan almost forgets how wild the whole thing is. At one point all of the Murphys sing some sort of Irish song that all of them seem to know by heart. When Zoe asks if the Hansens have any family songs, Heidi goes, “uh… Hava Nagila?”

Connor and Evan jokingly try to sing a song from choir but it doesn’t really work because they’re both tenors. Connor tries to sing the soprano part and doesn’t do a terrible job, considering, but Catherine cringes in the corner the entire time. 

Taylor and Aaron sing a song from Veggie Tales and Connor and Zoe sing along. Apparently that’s a big thing for Christian kids. 

It’s fun. It’s nice, just messing around with people Evan barely knows. 

Connor texts Evan nonstop from the moment he leaves the house, up until midnight. About stupid stuff like why superheroes should wear yoga pants and the history project they’re going to have to do soon. 

It almost feels like having a friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi it's not thursday  
> i just finished this early so... here ya go  
> for those of you qui ne parle pas francais the title is "she is in my head" it's from a french class meme song called lady melody  
> please comment it makes me happy


	29. two of them outside the graveyard wall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bye bye, Colorado

Evan wishes that his last day in Colorado was bittersweet.

He wishes that there was something that implored him to stay, so that he would cross Colorado state lines with a smile on his face that just slightly concealed a forlorn smile.

Unfortunately, it’s just mediocre. It’s just him shoving his dirty laundry back into his suitcase and promising his dad that he’ll keep in touch. Regardless of the promise, Evan knows that he won’t talk to him for a long time, not until Evan’s dad calls a year later, asking him ‘how’s it going?’ and if he’s ‘enjoying school.’ 

Catherine gives him music to listen to during the car ride and Olivia packs up some cookies which Heidi pretends to refuse, only to accept the cookies and shamelessly eat every one within the first fifteen minutes of the trip.

Evan kind of hopes that Connor will text him again so he can be entertained that way, but he never does. And Evan never initiates conversation. 

It’s a lonesome drive, and both Evan and his mother seem to be consumed in their own thoughts. They listen to the radio, some station that neither of them seem to care too much about. 

The first time Evan sees any sign of life in his mother is when she taps the little red blinking light on the dashboard in the shape of a gas tank. “We need fuel,” she says into the air. 

After a few hours, they pull over at a dingy rest stop with gas pumps outside and a little store inside. Heidi goes to fill up the tank and instructs Evan to go inside with a twenty and buy her a pack of Hostess Cupcakes and whatever he wants. 

Normally, gas stations play bad pop music from a generic radio station. But there’s Irish music playing from the overhead speakers that Evan vaguely recognizes from the Murphys’ house. 

Evan goes to the snack shelf and picks out a Hostess Cupcake package for his mom and a thing of Skittles for himself, as well as two water bottles. It’s eerie how desolate the store is. For such a busy highway, the store is completely empty, save for Evan and a bored-looking teenage cashier picking at his nails at the checkout counter. The whole place is old-looking and dusty. 

The lightbulb above the beer keeps flickering, and the turntable of precooked hot dogs sputters in and out of life. The whole place smells of coffee and old cigarettes. Evan glances out the window that is ninety percent plastered with ads and there’s his mom filling up the car, severed from the waist down by a poster advertising a local folk festival. 

Evan remembers that time when Jared announced that “all gas stations are liminal spaces.”

This is absolutely true.

This twisted 7/11 is somewhere between earth and hell, a commercialized Asphodel fields. 

When Evan walks to the checkout counter, the cashier doesn’t look up.

“Hello?”

“Hi.”

“Could I, um… buy these?”

“No. Nothing in this store is for sale.” He deadpans.

“What?”

“I’m fucking kidding.” The cashier looks up. “Cash or credit?”

“Connor?” Evan mumbles.

There’s a glint in the cashier’s eyes. “Not quite.”

But it is Connor, or at least one of them, framed by a wall of cigarettes that you need to have a valid ID to buy. 

“Why- what do you want from me?”

“Here’s the deal,” Fake Connor says, like a businessman making an offer. “Connor is on the edge of something and we need you to pull him back.”

“Edge of some- like, a scientific breakthrough or something?” 

“Like, death.” Fake Connor says, and swipes the Hostess Cupcakes through the machine. It beeps three times rapidly. “Connor is planning to kill himself on January 4th, 2019. He just doesn’t know it yet.” He swipes a water bottle. 

“You- you want me to- to- stop him?”

“Not stop him, per se.” Fake Connor muses. “If he ends up doing it, c’est la vie, you know? You need to prevent it. Get at the source.”

Fake Connor bags the stuff and takes Evan’s money. 

“How?”

“Is that all for today?” The cashier says, and although it’s still the same face, Evan can tell that Future Connor is gone. 

Evan grabs the plastic bag with a heavy heart. “Yes, please.”

“Have a good one,” he says with disinterest.

Evan doesn’t have much faith in that.

At first, he can’t find his car. But over in the corner of the parking lot is the beat-up old station wagon and his mom trying to wrestle a suitcase back into the trunk. He climbs into the passenger seat and the plastic bag of snacks crinkles in his lap. 

Heidi gets in and slams the door definitively. “Ready to jet?”

Evan wordlessly hands her the cupcakes. 

“You spoil me,” Heidi jokes.

“It was your money,” Evan says. 

“Didn’t know I raised such a jokester,” she teases.

Evan grimaces. “Yeah.”

“Alrighty!” And Heidi guns the car out of the parking lot and out into the expansive highway. 

Evan’s heart is pounding, and it’s not just because of the highway. He’s always hated driving on the highway.

What that Connor had said. That Connor is going to kill himself… when was it again? January 4th. That’s only six days away. 

In six days Connor is going to kill himself and Evan has to stop it. 

How the hell is he supposed to stop some kid he, honestly, barely knows from committing suicide? Shit, he couldn’t even stop himself from trying.

The highway is bordered by barren farmland, endless and austere. In the distance there are buildings that pop out from the landscape and offer a little comfort. 

At least someone lives in this desolate hell.

They go through Chicago and Evan actually kind of enjoys watching the people go about their lives. It’s a welcome break from the emptiness of the highway. Evan wonders if anyone scurrying from the barber’s to the grocery store is planning to kill themselves on January 4th. 

At some point in the ride, Heidi seemingly gets fed up with the troubled silence in the car and turns on her “road trip” playlist. In all honesty, it’s mostly Queen.

Nobody’s complaining.

The static seems to lift from the air. Heidi’s having the time of her life singing Fat Bottomed Girls and Evan almost forgets about January 4th. There’s miles and miles and miles of farms and Evan doesn’t really care. 

Evan’s phone dings and it’s a text from Connor. He opens it.

It’s a link to a youtube video of a ferret Pokemon walking to the Break My Stride song on loop for an hour. It’s oddly entrancing. 

But the best thing about it is that if Connor is texting Evan Pokemon videos that means he’s not thinking about killing himself about January 4th.

Evan can’t claim the same. 

When Evan gets home he immediately heads upstairs and dumps his bag right in the middle of the floor and he’s so tired that he doesn’t notice until he’s lying in bed how much his room smells like smoke and the fact that that picture from elementary school that the ghost smashed is shiny and new on his dresser, despite the fact that Evan definitely threw it out. 

But he’s too tired to think about all of that.

Instead, he counts the slats on his window shades, three times for each window, until his eyes get heavy and his heart stops racing. 

It’s December 29th.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi  
> I have nothing to say for myself
> 
> here's the pokemon video  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he0VujlcXM8&feature=youtu.be
> 
> comment?


	30. leave tonight or live and die this way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's January 4th.

On January second they go back to school. 

Evan thinks it’s kind of a dick move to shove them all back into the meat grinder after most people probably had big blowout New Year’s Eve parties and didn’t sleep a wink. Evan could technically claim to be well rested. After all, he and his mom had only stayed up to watch the ball drop, but he knows it isn’t true; he hasn’t been able to get a bit of sleep.

Whenever he does drift off into dreams, he always wakes up with his heart pounding and a sickly feeling that someone’s standing in the corner of his room, just out of sight. 

Evan watches Connor on that first day back. There’s got to be something to push him to kill himself in two days, right?

Wrong.

Connor acts exactly the same as he always does. Slouching in his seat in English class, eating alone at lunch, always with headphones in. 

Before fourth period Evan passes him in the hallways and waves. Connor shoots him a disinterested peace sign, and it’s clear he doesn’t really comprehend who just waved at him.

Evan has to stay after school for math, just to make sure he won’t fail his upcoming test. He definitely will, but at least when his teacher tells the class that some got it and some didn’t and that many of the people who didn’t understand the material didn’t reach out to try and improve, Evan won’t be lumped into the category. 

He has to cross the school to get to the door he leaves from to walk home, so he tries not to be bludgeoned in the head by the ping-pong club in the hallways and specifically ignores the group of girls going over dance moves for the upcoming musical. It looks like the dance is supposed to be kind of sexy, and all the girls laugh amongst themselves as he walks past. He tries very hard to not look at them dancing and absolutely Does Not make eye contact.

By the boy’s bathroom someone’s filling up their water bottle in the automatic dispenser thing where you just put it in and it fills it for you, so they’re just leaning against the wall and waiting for their gargantuan bottle to be full. Evan needs a refill, so he waits. 

The owner of the water bottle turns. It’s Connor, with one earbud in, and one that’s being absently passed between his fingers. “Oh. Hey.”

Evan does that white people smile and waves. “Hi.”

“What are you doing Friday?” Connor asks.

“Friday?”

“Yeah. Friday. It’s the… fourth, I think.”

Evan’s hands get very sweaty very quickly. “Why?”

“I dunno.” 

Why would Connor want to hang out with Evan on the day he’s going to kill himself? Unless he’s going to make it a murder-suicide thing, but Connor doesn’t seem like the kind of person to take another person down with him. Then again, how well does Evan actually know Connor? Why wouldn’t the ghost tell him about this kind of thing?

“-talk to people, you know?” Connor says, and Evan realizes that he has no idea of what he was just saying.

Evan blinks. “Yeah?”

“Are you doing anything that day?”

“Oh. No.”

“Cool cool.” Connor clicks his tongue nervously. “Want to… watch a movie? Or something?”

“What movie?” Evan asks, before realizing it’s probably a stupid question.

Connor’s face reddens. “I dunno.”

“Okay,” Evan says. 

“Cool.” Connor almost smiles. “I can drive you to my house?”

“Okay.”

“Okay. Sounds like a plan.” 

The sound of water on the floor alerts both of them to the fact that Connor’s water bottle overflowed a long time ago and is spilling all over. “Fuck!” he says, and grabs the bottle out from under the water fountain, carefully sipping from the edge to be able to close the cap. It doesn’t quite work.

Evan doesn’t quite know how it happened but he ended up at home, lost in thought and with plans for Friday.

He’s going to Connor’s house, right? That’s what they decided? They never made a final call about the movie.

So much is up in the air but at least if Evan’s with him, Connor can’t kill himself. He can try and stop it. And maybe if he stops it the ghosts will leave him the hell alone. 

Evan needs to write an outline for an English paper but he can’t think of a thesis statement and he’s kind of fucked because you can’t write an outline without a thesis. He has an idea about what he wants to write about, just not an arguable thesis. The morality of forbidden love. Social ethics versus personal happiness.

God, Evan wishes he had the choice of personal happiness.

And since his English essay is a lost cause instead of trying, he just ends up watching youtube videos and hating himself for not doing any work. But it’s fine, he has second period study tomorrow. 

The next day Connor smiles at Evan when they pass on the stairs. It’s weird.

In English class they peer edit and Evan doesn’t have an outline yet, so the girl he’s paired with edits hers alone while Evan frantically writes even the bare bones of his paper. Across the room, Connor is teamed up with Thomas and looks like he wants to blow his brains out as Thomas explains what exactly metafiction is. Maybe that’s an insensitive thing to think.

Maybe Evan should stop thinking about suicide.

At the top of his paper Evan writes “January 3, 2019.”

On Friday morning they have a delayed opening for teacher meetings. Evan probably should take the extra time to sleep in, but he likes to wake up early and take his time getting ready. He has time for breakfast, so he makes oatmeal and scrolls through Facebook while he watches that Marie Kondo show. They don’t technically have Netlix, but Evan mooches off of his grandmother’s account.

It’s a little silly to wish to be someone on a reality TV show, but Evan does wish that some nice woman would come over and fix his life in a few weeks. 

He’s not even that messy.

Well, that’s a lie. His closet is a hot mess. But everyone’s closet is a hot mess. At least, Evan consoles himself, he doesn’t put papers directly into his backpack. At least he uses a binder.

Jared picks Evan up three minutes too late. 

It’s an unusually warm day. They didn’t get much snow but the meager patches of grey seem to dissolve right before Evan’s eyes. Jared rolls down the window and Evan is a little cold, but it’s not the bone-chilling Massachusetts winter he’s used to. 

It’s nice.

In Evan’s opinion, there’s nothing better than seeing hundreds of high schoolers walk and drive to school in nothing but flannels and sweatshirts. To see them shed the layers and hats and float down the sidewalk. There’s a certain tension that lifts from the air when it’s warm. Suddenly, the world feels more alive. Everyone seems happier.

Or maybe Evan just has seasonal depression.

In the parking lot there’s a car with all the windows down blasting music from last year’s musical. The students tumble out, definitely more bodies than the car can fit. One girl has a shirt with a squid on it.

It makes Evan smile.

Not much makes him smile these days.

The date on the car dashboard is January 4th.

The date on his phone is January 4th.

It’s January 4th and Connor Eoghan Murphy is going to kill himself.

It’s January 4th and there is absolutely nothing that Evan can do.

The little sensible corner in Evan’s head tells him that he’s going to start hyperventilating soon but Evan can’t miss school or he’ll get a three hour detention so he’s just going to have to soldier through it, which Evan realizes is exactly the wrong decision when he gets inside and the lights are too bright and the students are too loud and everything is just too fucking much.

But he’s got to get out of this fucking cafeteria and to his math class because the warning bell just rang and if he doesn’t get there in three minutes his teacher will mark him absent and he’ll get a three hour detention and the vice principal will be mad at him and he needs Mr. Seaburd to like him because he holds all the power in the school and if Evan ever needs anything it’ll be good to have someone on the inside but he won’t have that if Mr. Seaburd hates him because he missed math class and Evan realizes that he’s been standing in the doorway of the cafeteria for a solid minute.

Slowly, zombie-like, Evan makes his way towards the hall. His throat feels too tight. 

It’s January 4th and Evan pulls at the skin of his neck and takes a deep breath.

He makes it to math class a minute before the bell. Evan didn’t do the homework because he doesn’t understand the material, so he sits in the back and tries to look like he did his homework because if he looks guilty or confused it’ll be more obvious that there’s a blank notebook page open on his desk where his homework should be.

Evan has gym, and he’d really rather do anything than gym. Like… have his toenails ripped off of his feet. Like be haunted.

He’d take ghost Connor over aggressive gym boys any day. 

They’re playing dodgeball, which is literally hell, especially when those overcompensating boys try and whip the ball across the gym as hard as they possibly can. The ball always hits the wall with a sickening “thud” and Evan’s gut turns at the thought of how much that would’ve hurt if it had actually found its mark. 

Evan’s just waiting to get hit in the head so he can go the nurse’s office and wait out the class, but the impact never comes. He gets hit in the leg once and gets out, and even though it’s revenge rules, he doesn’t know who hit him so he stands on the sidelines and watches everybody else go crazy. 

There are two girls dancing together. Evan wants to know what they’re dancing to, but they’re not singing anything, just counting and occasionally mumbling random stuff like “up, down, sparkle!”

Gym class would be a lot more bearable if he had a friend.

But it’s Friday and he has the whole weekend ahead of him, plenty of time to play Minecraft and put off his homework and listen to the same three songs on repeat.

It’s January 4th and a rogue ball whizzes past Evan’s ear, hitting the wall next to him with a sound that seems like a cannon went off.

It always sucks to have gym class in the morning because then you have to be sweaty all day. There are showers in the locker rooms, but there’s not actually time to shower and besides, that’s just weird.

It’s January 4th and when Evan passes Connor in the hallway he’s sweaty and he doesn’t know if it’s because of gym or because of the look on Connor’s face.

There’s something in the air.

The warm, thick smell of the waxing crescent of spring and teenagers who shed their coats during first period.

The tense electricity that something will happen, and you don’t know what.

The looming, heart-sinking notion that something has already happened.

The feeling of seeing the lights of an ambulance speed past your window at night or hearing the sirens of an ambulance careening towards your destination.

It’s January 4th and Evan has to save a life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi i know i haven't posted in a really long time!!  
> it's been tech week for the musical and i haven't been super motivated  
> so i went to the climate strike yesterday... neato! now i have to take two tests monday that i missed! but it's cool  
> leave comments about my fic or the green new deal or squids

**Author's Note:**

> hey bitches i know i have too many wips to start a whole new pile of shit lmao. 
> 
> BUT! I've decided to try and keep a consistent posting schedule of posting a new chapter every thursday. So please help me stay on the right track because god knows it won't be an easy feat.
> 
> okay fellas see you next thursday


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